Judge Kathleen M. Williams blasted Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the settlement, which created a $1.776 billion “slush fund” for Trump’s aggrieved allies and granted Trump, his family, and his businesses immunity from IRS audits.
Judge Williams also referred Todd Blanche to the Florida Bar Association and the New York Bar Association for possible disciplinary actions. Blanche, the acting Attorney General, was nominated by Trump to be Attorney General; Senate confirmation hearings begin this week.
The New York Times reported:
A federal judge on Monday ruled that President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an improper exercise in self-dealing and barred him from claiming that the extraordinary tax protections he received were part of a legitimate settlement agreement.
In the order, the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, also referred the lawyer who brought Mr. Trump’s case against the I.R.S. to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. Judge Williams added that she would forward her decision to the New York bar, which is already investigating the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche.
The decision by Judge Williams did not explicitly kill the deal that Mr. Trump had worked out with his own government to receive what amounted to amnesty from investigations into tax returns that he, his family and their businesses have already filed. But Judge Williams’s scathing ruling exposed the negotiations between Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and senior officials at the Justice Department he controls for what she says they were: backroom dealings that did not arise from a legitimate legal process.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” the judge wrote.
The 56-page decision, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, came two months after the Justice Department released a pair of documents purporting to be formal agreements that settled Mr. Trump’s remarkable suit against the I.R.S. The documents laid out a pair of separate but shocking moves — one granting the president, his family and his businesses wide-ranging immunity from tax inquiries and the other creating a $1.8 billion fund aimed at compensating allies of Mr. Trump who say they were the victims of so-called government weaponization.
After outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund. But he said that Mr. Trump’s extraordinary protections from I.R.S. scrutiny would remain in place.
The GOP knows that it’s in trouble with the voters. Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war against Iran is a disaster. It has caused inflation at a time when voters were already worried about affordability. Trump’s poll numbers are somewhere in the 30s.
His biggest issue, meant to distract voters, is to charge that our elections are fraudulent. He told world leaders that our elections are “rigged,” which is surprising considering that he and his party won the last (rigged?) election.
Marc Elias has led the legal battle to stop Trump’s multiple efforts to take control of voter data and to control state elections. The Constitution clearly says that states control their elections. He and his team of lawyers have fought the federal government in case after case and won.
Trump’s goal is to destroy Americans’ belief in the fairness of elections. The goal is to transfer the public’s trust to authoritarianism.
I doubt Donald Trump thinks Chuck Gray is allowing noncitizens to vote. Indeed, when the Wyoming Secretary of State first ran for the office in 2022, Trump endorsed him. In 2024, Wyoming overwhelmingly voted for Trump for president.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday, Trump’s Department of Justice sent Gray and the chief election officials in the other 49 states a letter warning that they could face criminal prosecution over possible noncitizen voting.
Utah’s top election official, Deidre Henderson, posted on social media that the letter was “truly bizarre behavior.” The Republican Lt. Governor noted that the DOJ “is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”
I can say confidently that neither Gray nor Henderson has anything to worry about. Like their colleagues in the other 48 states, they have done nothing to warrant the insulting correspondence they received.
Though I have profound differences with many Republican chief election officials, I have no doubt they, like their Democratic counterparts, aim to keep noncitizens off their voter rolls and have done nothing remotely criminal.
But keeping noncitizens from voting wasn’t the point of the DOJ’s letter. Nor is it the point of DOJ’s announcement that it is sending “observers” to watch primary elections in fifteen jurisdictions across six states — Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.
No, the point of both efforts, like so much in the Trump era, is performative. In lieu of evidence of actual fraud, the administration wants to use these clumsy steps to create the illusion that fraud exists.
This is a tactic Republicans regularly employ when it comes to their attacks on voting. For example, the DOJ has filed thirty lawsuits to gain access to state voter rolls. It has lost all 11 that have been decided. Yet its public posturing around the cases is intended to convey the message that something untoward resides in the data it seeks.
The RNC has followed a similar path, touting new anti-voting lawsuits that are either later dismissed or amount to nothing. Yet the propaganda value of the filing is achieved nonetheless.
There is a second, more dangerous reason why Trump and his allies act this way. They want to desensitize the public to their creeping authoritarianism.
When the DOJ deployed a handful of observers in advance of the 2025 elections, it caused waves. Now it is expanding that program with less fanfare. If, as I expect, it massively increases this behavior in the fall, officials want it to seem like old news.
Sadly, we have seen this work for Trump.
The right wing has made promoting lies about elections its top priority. It shows up in every presidential speech, is embraced by every GOP campaign, and is promoted — at least in part — by every right-wing advocacy effort.
Anyone nominated to the federal bench by this administration is required to adhere to certain norms supporting election denialism. They cannot say Biden won the 2020 election; they must parrot at least some form of voter fraud allegations.
Democrats dismiss these statements but mostly want to discuss other topics — the economy, jobs and healthcare. This makes good campaign sense but leaves a mismatch in the volume of messages Americans hear on the vital topic of democracy.
The legacy media has proven itself unable or unwilling to stay focused on threats to democracy. It feels institutionally compelled to treat the entire issue as a two-sided political contest rather than as an existential threat to the rule of law and the country.
That leaves those of us in the pro-democracy movement. Independent media has made great strides but continues to suffer from a lack of reach and resources necessary to inform the broader public of the nature and extent of the risks.
Voting rights organizations and lawyers do the hard work in the trenches but face Republican officials, a hostile administration and well-funded opponents.
With four months until the election, the challenges I lay out above will only grow. I haven’t even mentioned the role of disinformation, foreign interference, or how the Supreme Court might undercut efforts to protect voting.
But the truth is that we have faced these threats before — in 2020, when Trump tried to overturn the election and then inspired a violent insurrection at the Capitol, and in 2022, when his followers tried to prevent certification of elections.
We can defeat Trump’s authoritarianism. We can protect our elections and our democracy. But it will require all of us working together with a common mission.
That starts with refusing to allow ourselves to become numb to what Trump is doing, and insisting that we remain vigilant for signs that it is getting worse. In short, it requires us not to turn away, but to focus on the threats.
In the weeks and months ahead, there will be opportunities to discuss specific tactics and steps to take. But for now, all I ask is that you stay engaged. It’s okay to be tired and worried. It is not okay, however, to give up hope. That is what Trump wants — and is counting on.
Rebecca Slaughter was a member of the Federal Trade Commission, appointed by Trump to a Democratic seat in 2018, then reappointed for a second term by Biden in 2023. In 2025, Trump fired her and another member of the commission. She challenged her dismissal in court, because she had been removed without cause. On June 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the President could fire members of independent commissions without cause.
Although the conservative majority claims to be “originalists,” they overruled a long-standing precedent (“Humphrey’s Executor”) which protected the independence of independent commissions, requiring the president to have cause for firing or removing a member of an independent commission.
Trump hailed the decision as “the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.”
Trump just removed three of the four remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission. He didn’t have to give a reason. Everyone (except members of the Federal Reserve) serves at his pleasure. By law, the four-member commission is supposed to be bipartisan, with two members from each party.
What makes this removal ominous is that Trump has made no secret of his desire to manipulate the election machinery to benefit his party. He wants to change the rules of eligibility, change the documentation, change mail-in voting, anything that might make it more difficult to vote.
L.C. Francis of the L.C. Francis Open Society for History & Civics warns about the dangers of removing an electoral safeguard on the cusp of an important election. Will any new commissioners be Trump partisans? Will they swear their loyalty to him? Will they agree that the 2020 election, which he lost decisively, was rigged?
L.C. Francis writes:
Trump could not force an independent commission to carry out his voting agenda. Less than four months before the midterms, he removed the entire leadership team.
“Power is of an encroaching nature, and ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” —James Madison, Federalist No. 48
Dear Friends,
Imagine learning, over your first cup of coffee, that less than four months before a national election, every seat on the federal commission created to protect the machinery of that election is vacant. No commissioners remain to lead it, to question political pressure, or to stand between the White House and the rules beneath the ballot.
Donald Trump recently eliminated the last three members of the United States Election Assistance Commission, leaving all four positions vacant. Two commissioners were dismissed via email, while the third resigned after being informed of her imminent removal. Subsequently, the White House issued a statement that clarified the intent behind these actions: stating that election officials need to be “totally aligned” with the president’s agenda.
The issue at hand is that an election commission, originally meant to stay independent from presidential influence, has been undermined by a president who thinks its leadership should be aligned with him.
To fully understand what has been at stake, we need to return to Florida in 2000. Election workers held punch-card ballots up to the light while lawyers argued over hanging chads, incomplete punches, and the intentions of individual voters. The presidency turned on 537 votes, handing George W. Bush the Oval Office, and the country discovered that the right to vote depended on an aging and uneven election system that few Americans had ever considered.
After the chaos of the 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act and established the Election Assistance Commission on the hard lesson that no president, party, or faction should control the machinery beneath the ballot. Its four members were evenly split between the parties, recommended by congressional leaders, confirmed by the Senate, and required to produce three votes before the commission could act.
The design was intentional because the agency manages voting-system standards, testing labs, election grants, and the national registration form, all of which influence an election well before any ballots are counted.
While researching this article, I was struck by James Madison’s warning that power tends to overreach. Congress learned this lesson and distributed authority over elections among the states, Congress, the courts, and an independent bipartisan commission. It’s important to remember that while the president may nominate members, he cannot legally turn the commission into an arm of his campaign or personal agenda.
Trump has already tried to cross that boundary.
In March 2025, he directed the commission to require documentary proof of citizenship on the federal registration form and sought to implement new rules for mail ballots and election funding. However, a federal court halted key parts of the initiative because the Constitution assigns the regulation of federal elections to Congress and the states, not the president.
He was unable to compel the commission to follow his order and has now dismissed everyone who had been managing it.
Trump is not currently in the Oval Office altering vote counts. Instead, he aims to influence the rules governing elections before votes are even cast, including who can register, what identification is required, which voting systems are permitted, and the extent of federal pressure on the states.
We still have lawful means to prevent the consolidation of power.
The commission needs three confirmed members to function legally. Any replacements must get Senate approval, and bipartisan membership is still required. Moreover, state attorneys general and secretaries of state can challenge illegal federal requests before Election Day.
In fact, election officials are authorized to publicly disclose all White House instructions, preserve all communications, and reject policies exceeding presidential authority. Courts can also issue injunctions against disputed rules before those rules reach voting ballots, registration offices, or voting machines.
The public must therefore monitor the replacement process with the same attention normally reserved for election night. The nominees’ names, records, testimony, and views on presidential power will determine whether the commission remains independent or becomes obedient in all but name.
Congress created this commission because the country learned in 2000 that an election can be lost in the machinery before a single result is announced. Trump has now cleared out his leadership as the nation prepares to decide whether to restrain his power. No serious citizen should mistake the timing as coincidence.
The chairs at the Election Assistance Commission may be empty, but the law has not surrendered them. Courts can still block unlawful executive action, as the Kennedy Center injunction proved. States can resist presidential interference, public records can expose what is being attempted, and every nominee can be scrutinized before obedience is allowed to pass for qualification.
The danger is not that our constitutional defenses have vanished…It’s that Americans may wait to use them until the damage is already done.
I’ve always believed that no president controls the machinery of an American election. It is ultimately owned by the states, the law, our Constitution, and, most importantly, We the People.
Trump pardoned the convicted criminals who were sentenced because of their actions on January 6, 2021. Those who committed the most serious crimes were accused of seditious conspiracy and did not receive a pardon. They are leaders of the Proud Boys, a group of right wing extremists. They were later pardoned by Todd Blanche.
(CNN) — A federal judge on Friday dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against several Proud Boys members — granting a request from Trump’s Justice Department and undoing one of the Biden administration’s most celebrated victories against those who it said inspired the January 6, 2021, attack on American democracy.
US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, begrudgingly agreed to drop the case against the four members, saying he “lacks the authority to compel the Executive to pursue a prosecution, full stop.”
“President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6—whether those views are based on fact or fiction—are well known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them through the Executive Order,” Judge Kelly said, referring to Trump on his first day back in office signing an order commuting their sentences.
Trump’s order granted pardons to over 1,000 people convicted in the attack but left in place the convictions of the four Proud Boys members — Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.
In April, the Justice Department under Todd Blanche moved to vacate their convictions.
Dismissing the case against the Proud Boys associates erases some of the most serious convictions from the sprawling investigation of the US Capitol riot, one of the largest federal investigations in US history. Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were found guilty in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and a range of other charges. Pezzola was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other charges related to January 6.
The US district judge who sits in Washington, DC, said in his order that the Trump administration sought to “treat this case essentially the same way it has all January 6 cases, without regard for the seriousness of the conduct at issue or even whether the case was initiated after President Biden took office or, like this one, while President Trump was still in power.”
“The decisions to issue the Executive Order and to abandon this prosecution—even after the Government secured convictions for serious crimes relating to the attack on the Capitol on January 6—are solely the Executive’s,” Kelly continued. “No one should mistake the Court’s granting of the Government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions.”
Rehl, one of the Proud Boys members, celebrated the dismissal in a post on X, saying, “Finally, it’s all over! January 6th can now be a thing of the past for me!”
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the group who had also been pardoned by Trump, was also quick to boast on X Friday night: “Justice is served! Proud Boys don’t lose. We win. This is our victory.”
Trump has long lambasted the January 6 prosecutions as an injustice against his supporters, even referring to those in jail as “hostages.”
The president has repeatedly called January 6, 2021, “a day of love and peace” and claimed his supporters posed “zero threat.” His comments are contradicted by hundreds of video clips of Trump supporters beating police with flagpoles, batons, wooden clubs and baseball bats; deploying stun guns and chemical sprays; and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police officers.
The judge, calling the insurrection “a perilous event,” said it was “an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured. It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government—Congress—that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’”
Closing his order with a somber warning, Kelly said, “Moving forward, if this Nation’s experiment in self-government is to last another 250 years, the American people—no matter their partisan preferences—will have to act together to preserve, protect and defend that miracle through our constitutional framework.”
The Trump administration claims to be transparent, but it is quick to harass reporters if they discover and reveal information that the administration wants to hide. The New York Times recently explained that Trump had to use his old Presidential airplane to return from the NATO meeting in Ankara, Turkey, because his huge airplane–the Qatari gift– didn’t have the required security enhancements. The reporters credited with the story received subpoenas, and the government will try to compel them to testify before a grand jury and reveal their sources.
The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.
The Times denounced the administration’s actions.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, in a statement on Friday evening.
“Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used,” Mr. McCraw wrote. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The subpoenas contain few specifics, asking only that the journalists testify “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” They were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Mr. Clayton, who leads one of the country’s most prominent law enforcement offices, was recently nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as director of national intelligence.
Representatives for the White House did not respond to inquiries on Friday evening.
In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”
“We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but D.O.J. also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information,” said the spokeswoman, Emily Covington. She added, “We recognize there may always be natural tension there, but we are not going to ignore the law.”
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had departed Turkey on the old Air Force One as a security precaution at the urging of the Secret Service. On Thursday, The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. Both articles cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
Before the Wednesday article was published, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted a reporter and a senior editor at The Times to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The F.B.I. official declined to explain the security issue. The official also asked The Times to disclose its sources for the article; the newspaper refused to do so. (A spokesman for The Times, Charlie Stadtlander, confirmed the account.)
Mr. Trump has long been a harsh critic of the news media. But in his second term in office, he has moved aggressively to use the immense powers of the federal government in his efforts to attack the press.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department sought to compel testimony from journalists at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas after both news organizations fought back in sealed filings.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have initiated leak investigations into the disclosure of classified information. But subpoenas aimed at journalists are not common, and First Amendment advocates say they can chill the work of news gathering.
In January, F.B.I. agents took the rare step of searching the home of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. The agents seized phones, laptops and a smartwatch after executing a search warrant. Ms. Natanson had spent months speaking with government employees while reporting on the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal work force.
The Times is a party to several lawsuits involving Mr. Trump and his administration.
The president suedThe Times last year, accusing it of defaming him, disparaging his reputation and seeking to undermine his 2024 candidacy.
In December, The Timessued the Defense Department after it imposed restrictions on reporters who cover the military. The company sued again after the agency reduced reporters’ physical access to the Pentagon.
In May, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued The Times, accusing it of employment discrimination. On Friday, The Timesfiled a counterclaim, saying the lawsuit was an act of retaliation for its coverage of the Trump presidency and a violation of its First Amendment rights.
Heather Cox Richardson reviews the new focus in Trump’s actions. He has lost interest in governing. He is fixated on rigging the 2026 elections and redecorating the White House. He wants to leave indelible changes, sort of like the “Kilroy was here” graffiti. But in Trump’s case, he wants to make changes that can’t be wiped away, like tearing down the East Wing before anyone could stop him. His golden ballroom will be his lasting memorial. His successor will quickly strip the Oval Office of the gold kitsch that he plastered all over the walls, making it look like the reception room of Louis XIV.
Richardson writes:
Presumably afraid of investigations into his actions, President Donald J. Trump appears to have abandoned all pretense of governing for the good of the country and is focusing on rigging the 2026 election to keep Republicans in power.
This morning, as the National Association of Realtors reported that U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high, he announced that he will not sign the housing bill, which was designed to address the unaffordability of housing and which passed Congress with strong bipartisan majorities, “in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”
As the Lincoln Project summed it up, the Republican Party’s message four months before the midterms appears to be, “You’re not getting affordable housing unless you give up your voting rights.”
His demand for the passage of a bill that most observers agree will suppress voting is only one of the ways that Trump is trying to rig the 2026 election.
After federal judges have repeatedly prohibited the administration from seizing state voter lists, apparently to run them through a program designed to identify noncitizens who are not eligible for certain federal programs (something federal judges have also prohibited), Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice appear to have turned to trying to intimidate election officials.
On Tuesday the Department of Justice confirmed that it has sent letters to election officials in all fifty states and Washington, D.C., warning them that they could be criminally prosecuted if noncitizens vote. The letters came from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist, and gave them five days to detail how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”
Utah lieutenant governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican, posted on social media: “Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution. I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”
Last night, Trump fired the last two Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent federal commission that helps state and local officials make sure elections are smooth and secure. Among other things, it certifies voting machines and maintains the national mail-voter registration forms. The only other current member of the EAC, a Republican, resigned. The fourth member of the EAC, a Republican, resigned earlier this year.
A White House official told Justin Papp of CNBC that the Supreme Court recognized Trump’s authority to fire the agency officials in its June 29 Trump v. Slaughter decision, which overturned more than 90 years of precedent to rubber stamp the president’s right to fire agency officials who are not aligned with his political agenda.
“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted,” the official told Papp. “The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”
Legal analyst Harry Litman says this interpretation of the Slaughter decision is a stretch. He noted that “[n]othing in the agency cases held that Trump could simply shut down an agency of Congress’s creation. That’s what he has done with the [E]lection Assistance [C]ommission which now lacks commissioners to act. It’s taking the court’s cases to the ultimate conclusion and just disabling an important agency.”
The nonpartisan, nonprofit League of Women Voters, which works to protect the right to vote, called the removal of the Election Assistance Commission officials “a direct attack on the independence of our nation’s election infrastructure…. The American people deserve elections administered by trusted professionals, not shaped by political interference. This is not a routine personnel decision—it is a dangerous escalation in the effort to weaken the safeguards that protect free and fair elections in the November midterms.”
This is the backdrop for the news from Betsy Klein and Kaitlan Collins of CNN today that the White House is fortifying the White House entrance at the North Portico during Trump’s renovation of the Ionic columns there.
In March, Trump’s appointee to the Commission on Fine Arts, which advises Trump on design matters, urged replacing the historic Ionic columns with more ornate Corinthian columns that would match the ones Trump picked out for his ballroom. The White House says the work on the North Portico is “standard restoration work,” but did not answer CNN’s question about whether there would be more substantial changes to the North Portico. Trump recently posted pictures of the Corinthian columns at his proposed ballroom, boasting that “When completed, there will be nothing like it anywhere in the World!”
While the focus has been on the historic columns and their possible replacement, it is not until now we have learned about the strengthening of the White House door. The portico is now covered with scaffolding that is covered with a drape, and a White House official told Klein and Collins that the renovations will include security enhancements at the request of the U.S. Secret Service.
Dan Diamond of the Washington Post also reported today that under the Trump administration, the Secret Service, the White House, and the Interior Department are seeking to place permanent eight- to nine-foot-tall fencing around Lafayette Square, where tourists and protesters congregate, in front of the White House. They are also considering fencing off the parts of Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. In the past, when officials believed it was necessary to shut off access to Lafayette Square, they used temporary barriers to avoid the perception that they were restricting public access to what is known as the People’s House.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting congressional representative from the District of Columbia., objected. “More fencing around the President’s Park would send the wrong message to the nation and the world by continuing to transform our democracy from one that is accessible and of the people to one that is exclusive and fearful of its own citizens,” she said.
Tonight, at 11:59 PM, the housing bill became law without the president’s signature.
Trump boasted about the U.S. Supreme Court decision Trump v. Slaughter gave him more power than any other President. That decision removes protection from members of independent commissions. With the exception of the Federal Reserve Board (which regulates the banking system and whose stability is crucial to the economy), Trump now has the power to fire any member of any independent commission without cause. He can stack those commissions with his cronies, with people who have no expertise but will do whatever he wants.
What’s the point of having “independent” commissions if they are not independent of political influence?
Thom Hartmann wrote that the Court majority just rolled back the Pendleton Act of 1883, which created the Civil Service:
The six unscrupulous Republicans on the Supreme Court — over the loud objections of the three true constitutionalists on the Court — are aggressively dragging America back not just to the 1950s but, as of yesterday, to the 1830s.
Arguably the most depraved president in American history, Andrew Jackson (aka “The Indian Killer” a title he gave himself), Trump’s favorite, whose picture he hung in the Oval Office, invented what came to be called the “Spoils System.”
If you wanted a job in the federal government, or a favorable ruling from one of the then-few federal agencies, all you had to do was give a big enough gift to President Jackson, or pledge your loyalty to him instead of the Constitution and the people, and your wish would be granted…
The Federal Reserve protects the nations’ banking system and thus ensures stability and prosperity for America’s billionaires and the companies that made them that way. By blowing up Trump’s attempt to remove the Fed’s one Black governor (presumably as part of his and Hegseth’s Make America White Again campaign), the Republicans on the Court defended America’s oligarchs.
The other federal agencies, like the FTC, mostly protect you and me. They oversee our environment, consumer product safety, the purity of our food and drugs, and so on. If anything, America’s oligarchs consider them a pain in the ass.
If Democrats win the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress in 2028, they can write new laws reviving limits on Presidential power, protecting merit-based appointments, and strengthening the federal civil service.
Until that happens, Trump can fire any member of the Federal Trade Commission,
Trump is the master of using the courts to win his battles, but lately he’s been on a losing streak.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his request to excuse him from paying E. Jean Carroll $5 million, which was awarded by a jury in New York. With the interest it has accrued, Trump now owes her $5.8 million.
An appeals court on Wednesday denied President Trump’s bid to pause the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center while he challenges a lower court ruling.
A three-judge panel determined the administration’s lawyers did not prove the president or the performing arts center would suffer irreparable harm if his name was removed from the venue as ordered.
“First, they argue that removal of President Trump’s name will inflict irreparable harm in terms of expense and time ‘squander[ed][.]’ Since that removal has already occurred, stay would not avert those harms (even assuming they would qualify as irreparable),” the judges wrote in their order.
“Second, Appellants allege financial harm to the Kennedy Center if they are not permitted to reinstate President Trump’s name. They argue that removal of President Trump’s name ‘threatens to impede the Center’s fundraising efforts and [will] contribute to the financial decline of the Center.’ Appellants, however, have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence,” they added.
Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both Obama appointees, denied the Trump administration’s motion for a stay pending appeal.
Donald Trump dropped down in Ankara, Türkiye, for the big NATO summit, and wasted no time confirming every European leader’s worst instincts about whether or not the United States is any longer their friend.
You see, the stupid senile bitch Trump still thinks that part of the NATO deal is that the other members should jump up to help every time Benjamin Netanyahu tricks him into starting a war no other American president was stupid enough to start. He thinks they owe that to him. He thinks that’s part of Article 5. He’s the stupidest, most useless brain of any human who’s ever taken up space on God’s green earth.
So he arrived in Ankara and, during a press availability with Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, immediately started in babbling about his Greenland shit again.
“Greenland doesn’t help Denmark, Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the United States,” the president continued.
Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” he concluded.
Sorry about all this yet again, Europe.
Notably, it was reported this weekend that France has had to prepare for the very real possibility of a “shooting war” with the US over Greenland. Now here comes Trump to start running his fucking mouth about that again, and Danish PM Mette Fredriksen is having to reiterateat NATO that she will defend Greenland, and that it’s “not for sale.”
Trump also continued yesterday to make threats to remove troops from Europe, said hopeful words about a peace deal for his father Putin in Russia and Ukraine (despite how his opinion on the matter is less than irrelevant), and said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a “nice person,” while whining some more that she wouldn’t help him bomb Iran at Netanyahu’s request. This, despite how just this weekend, he was still fanning the flames of the stupid feud he started with her by telling pathetic, unbelievable lies about her wanting to be in the same room with him.
He also recommenced his bitching that if it hadn’t been for the foul fucking dictator he was meeting with at the time, for whom he’s always had a little Trumpy boner, he might not have even come to the NATO summit:
“I was very disappointed with NATO, and frankly, if it weren’t held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very strong leader, a very strong person, it’s possible that I wouldn’t have attended. I felt I had to attend because of the fact that, you know, I know he’s gone all out.”
Did y’all hear about trashball Erdoğan’s latest stunt, denying a gay cruise ship permission to dock in Istanbul because of the homosexual lifestyle? Motherfucker does not belong in a community of respected nations like NATO, but we understand why they might keep him there as a means of controlling him. (It’s good that Turkey’s bid for European Union membership is forever stalled.)
Of course, the same could probably be said for the United States these days.
Anyway, back to Trump’s humiliation of himself and of the United States!
Here is Trump today in a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, HEREBY DEMANDING an end to all trade with Spain, including tourism!
“Spain is a wasted cause. We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain, please. […] Cut off all trade with Spain, please! Including visits, OK? We don’t want anything to do, watch them come running back …”
Can Trump actually do that unilaterally? Of course not, but he’s too stupid to understand that. And of course only 4.9 percent of Spain’s exports — 18 billion euros worth — head to the United States, whereas 23 billion euros worth of goods come from the US to Spain. Trump knows nothing about trade, but that’s called a trade surplus.
As for the tourism, does Trump think Spaniards are flocking to American shores? Or is he going to try to ban Americans from visiting Spain, AKA the second-most-visited tourism destination in the world?
Just curious how the dumb bitch is planning to humiliate himself here.
Spain has not committed to Trump’s THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER demands to kick its defense spending up to five percent of its annual budget by 2035. And Pedro Sánchez is always mean to him, and he does it while looking handsome and in Castilian Spanish, so it’s a humiliation for Trump on all fronts and that’s why he’s mad.
Trump finished that clip above by whining that Spain also mistreats Mark Rutte, Trump’s special boy who always stays in character pretending he respects Trump, and Trump buys it, because Trump is stupid and easily flattered.
In response to Trump’s comments, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s office said that Spain “maintains an excellent social, cultural, and economic relationship with the US, and we have no intention of seeing that change.”
The spokesperson said the Spanish government regarded such statements “as a matter of routine.”
The spokesperson referenced the U.S.’ trade surplus with Spain, and the fact that the European Union handles trade for the bloc’s 27 member countries.
How do you say “Yeah we hear that old bitch running his mouth” in Spanish? (Something like Sí, oímos a ese viejo cabrón parloteando sin parar, maybe.)
So anyway, that’s been what the beginning of the NATO summit has looked like. And Rutte had such high hopes for there being a united NATO front against Vladimir Putin! Too bad the ass he’s got his tongue up is that of a stupid orange Hitler wannabe who thinks he’s impressive because he (allegedly) passes dementia tests.
If you have not read that incredible Wall Street Journal article from this weekend about all the ways European leaders work together to make Trump their useful idiot, how they scheme to manage that dumbfuck, all as they strategize on how to get out of their now-abusive relationship with Trump’s America, now would be a good time.
American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office.
It begins with an account of the secret meeting European leaders had at the beginning of this year on exactly how to break up with America. It discusses how Meloni thought Trump could be reasoned with at that meeting, but now no longer does. It talks about how they literally all craft their text messages to make the illiterate idiot feel safe:
When texting Trump, Rutte would echo the president’s own syntax and hyperbole, keeping his messages congratulatory, with staccato sentences. He immersed himself in the role so thoroughly some heads of government who worked with him began describing him as an actor who never broke character.
Soon, European leaders were following his lead. Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister started workshopping their text messages to Trump, talking about which words they should render in capital letters. Sometimes, the Norwegian leader preferred his Finnish counterpart to send a message. Nordic officials worried that the mere mention of Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize, could reopen a sore wound.
The American president, that’s who they are talking about.
How they talk to him about advocating for a ceasefire in Ukraine, when he starts taking Putin’s side? They use his words: “Stop the killing,” because those are the simple words Trump understands. “Trump lectured top EU official Ursula von der Leyen for advocating sanctions on Russia, so she started referring to economic pressure as tariffs.”
If you want the senile dumbass to do anything, call it a tariff! Wow.
And then there’s:
Weeks into Trump’s second term, Macron visited to discuss NATO and Ukraine. The two spent hours together, and the U.S. president seemed open to his ideas. They used a tablet to dial into a video call led by Justin Trudeau. But as the Canadian prime minister was talking, Trump, frustrated with a technical issue that prevented him from chiming in, lobbed the device over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official present said.
Like a toddler cat with dementia.
Does Trump bring foreign leaders into a room off the Oval Office full of MAGA hats and — no shit — Florsheim shoes, and tell them to pick whatever they’d like? He does. Apparently he thinks their wives (???) might like to relist the swag he gives them on Facebook Marketplace, or take it on Antiques Roadshow?
During their chat, Trump told [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz he had something to show him, and walked the chancellor of Germany into a small study off the Oval Office. It was, Trump announced, “the Lewinsky room” and he had filled it with MAGA memorabilia, including red hats and boxes of Florsheim dress shoes. “Just grab whatever you want,” a congenial Trump told his German guests, adding that their wives could sell the swag for “thousands of dollars.”
“That’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard about Trump” has now happened more than once in this article.
If you want to see something really embarrassing, just watch the full presser with Rutte. You’ll be able to envision Trump throwing things off desks like a fucking baby quite easily.
There’s a second part of the report out now, on how Canadian PM Mark Carney has been at the forefront of the effort to get Europe thinking and acting as its own superpower in a world where it can’t rely on the USA, hammering to them the message that “the old America isn’t coming back.”
You’ll want to read that one while you, too, grapple with the world’s growing embrace of Carney’s thesis.
