#trump

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith gave about two investigations of Trump. The document shows how Smith during the course of a daylong deposition repeatedly defended the basis for pursuing indictments against Trump and vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

Although the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on the issue, seven federal circuit courts have, and they all upheld the First Amendment right to record the police. Likewise, federal circuits have upheld the right to use vulgar language to oppose police without fear of retaliation, and to warn others of nearby police checkpoints or speed traps.

Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page "reconciliation" bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States.

Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country's population. I don't think that's ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)

While his higher profile targets have gotten all the attention, the Associated Press has a very good story you should read about Carr’s efforts to bully a Bay Area radio station (KCBS) after it accurately informed locals about the goonish behavior of masked ICE agents.

Carr opened a fake investigation into the network last February, claiming the station had violated ambiguous public interest standards. The fake inquiries were tethered to a right wing antisemitic propaganda campaign attempting to link George Soros to these stations despite Soros’ limited investment involvement being both irrelevant and three or four layers deep.

As our already struggling, highly consolidated, and under-funded media outlets tend to do, KCBS immediately folded under federal existential threat, just as Carr hoped:

“KCBS demoted a well-liked anchor and dialed back on political programming, people said. For months, reporters were dissuaded from pursuing political or controversial topics and instead encouraged to focus on human interest stories, according to the current and former staffers.”

When staffers did try to cover more political fare, they say the tone was heavily scrutinized and the content was watered down to a bland gruel to avoid upsetting Republicans:

“Doug Sovern, a veteran political journalist at the station, said he was sidelined after Carr announced his investigation.

“‘Chilling effect’ does not begin to describe the neutering of our political coverage,” said Sovern, who retired in April. He said his retirement was not related to the controversy.”

As Carr was distracted by his other extremist projects, like failing to censor Kimmel, some of the scrutiny eased and the station regained the confidence to at least report on things like the No Kings protest. But the bullying appears to have had its intended effect. At one point, a KCBS reporter says he was denied the opportunity to interview Katie Porter because management felt it would upset Donald Trump:

Yesterday The President announced reducing regulatory burden on nuclear energy companies. Today the President’s company announces they are merging with a nuclear energy company.

The firm behind President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform is merging with a Google-backed energy company in a deal valued at more than $6bn (£4.4bn).

That’s the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and the Guardian all confidently telling their readers that Trump can magically override state sovereignty with a memo. These aren’t fringe blogs—these are supposedly serious news organizations with actual editors who apparently skipped the day they taught how the federal government works. They have failed the most simple journalistic test of “don’t print lies in the newspaper.”

Executive orders aren’t laws. They’re memos. Fancy, official memos that tell federal employees how to do their jobs, but memos nonetheless. You want to change what states can and can’t do? You need this little thing called “Congress” to pass this other little thing called “legislation.” Trump can’t just declare state laws invalid any more than he can declare himself emperor of Mars.

But here’s where this gets kinda funny (in a stupid way): that “interstate commerce” language could backfire spectacularly. Almost all state laws trying to regulate the internet—from child safety laws to age verification to the various attempts at content moderation laws—might run afoul of the dormant commerce clause by attempting to regulate interstate commerce if what the admin here claims is true (it’s not really true, but if the Supreme Court buys it…). Courts had been hesitant to use this nuclear option because it would essentially wipe out the entire patchwork of state internet regulation that’s been building for years, and a few decades of work in other areas that hasn’t really been challenged. Also, because they’ve mostly been able to invalidate those laws using the simple and straightforward First Amendment.

The real story here isn’t that Trump signed some groundbreaking AI policy—it’s that the entire mainstream media apparatus completely failed to understand the most basic principles of American government. Executive orders aren’t magic spells that override federalism. They’re memos.

Trump said at the roundtable, adding "this money would not be possible without tariffs."

Another way to spend the money that’s already been spent many times over.

It is beyond belief that this is happening and tolerated in this country. 😭

The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

Do Trump and the Republican's just hate the earth? Apparently nobody even wants to drill for oil there. So why is this such a priority?

The U.S. Senate is about to vote on a resolution to toss ex-President Biden’s limits on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and ensure nothing like it is imposed again. ... Congress and the Trump administration have already nullified the Biden limits on leasing in the Arctic Refuge. But the latest nullification method uses the Congressional Review Act. That means a future president could not impose substantially similar limits without an act of Congress.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., spoke against the resolution. An outdoorsman who has travelled to the region, Heinrich described the refuge as a breathtaking wilderness that’s vital for hundreds of species of birds and wildlife.

““The Arctic Refuge is the crown jewel of our National Wildlife Refuge System, and it belongs to every single American,” he said. “It deserves our protection.”

Market forces may, in effect, provide that protection. No major oil companies bid when the first Trump administration held an ANWR lease sale in 2021. A lease sale during the Biden administration, with more restrictive conditions imposed, drew no bids at all.

A list of criminals Trump has pardoned.

State legislation to attempt to protect privacy forthcoming hopefully.

A report last month out of the University of Washington found several local police departments authorized U.S. Border Patrol to use their license plate reader databases. And in other cases, Border Patrol had backdoor access without express permission. In some instances, police conducted searches on behalf of the federal agency. By Worries extend beyond immigration.

Authorities in Texas this year searched thousands of the cameras, as far as Washington state and Illinois, in their search for a woman believed to have had a self-administered abortion.

Innocent until proven guilty. Unless you have a race, speak Spanish, speak with an accent, or your job involves physical labor.

In Los Angeles, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling has temporarily allowed immigration enforcement agents operating in that city to use race as one of the reasons for a stop. They can also use people speaking Spanish, accented English, and working certain physical labor jobs to guess if someone is in the country without legal status.

Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon, under a 17-page memo distributed Friday that steps up media restrictions imposed by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” the directive states. The signature form includes an array of security requirements for credentialed media at the Pentagon.

Advocates for press freedoms denounced the non-disclosure requirement as an assault on independent journalism. The new Pentagon restrictions arrive as Trump expands threats, lawsuits and government pressure as he remakes the American media landscape.

Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.

The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and DWAC, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.

Even if Trump Media and its officers face no criminal exposure for the transactions, the optics of borrowing money from potentially unsavory sources through opaque conduits could cloud Trump’s image as he seeks to recapture the White House in 2024.

The extent of the exposure for Trump Media and its officers for money laundering remains unclear. The statutes broadly require prosecutors to show that defendants knew the money was the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity and the transaction was designed to conceal its source.

But money laundering prosecutions are typically based on circumstantial evidence and can be based on materials that show that the money in question was unlikely to have legitimate origins, legal experts said.

The first $2m payment to Trump Media came in December 2021 when the company was on the brink of collapse after the planned merger with DWAC – that would have unlocked millions for the company – was delayed when the SEC opened an inquiry into whether the arrangement broke regulatory rules.

Trump Media needed a bridge loan to keep the company afloat. But it struggled to get financing until DWAC’s chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced a $2m loan wired from Paxum Bank registered in Dominica, according to the wire transfer receipt reviewed by the Guardian.

The wire transfer identified Paxum Bank as the beneficial owner, although the promissory note identified an entity ca

Presidents and congressional representatives from both parties have established a dangerous precedent of expanding Presidential power to the point of conducting full scale war without congressional approval. It is unconstitutional and a failure of the elected officials on both sides to uphold the constitution.

A Florida judge granted motions to dismiss to The Guardian and other defendants in a defamation lawsuit filed by Truth Social’s parent company, Truth Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the latest example of President Donald Trump’s legal actions against media companies not holding up in court.

The dispute arose from two articles published by the UK-based Guardian in March 2023 “reporting on a federal criminal investigation related to TMTGs receipt of two payments totaling $8 million,” Judge Hunter Carroll of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit Court for Sarasota County wrote in his order summarizing the case, including reports that “federal prosecutors in New York were conducting a money laundering investigation related to the payments, which were wired through the Caribbean from Paxum Bank and ES Family Trust, entities with ties to an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin and a history of providing banking services to the sex worker industry,” and that the origins of the loans caused alarm at TMTG and TMTG’s then CFO weighed returning the money, but the money was ultimately not returned.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, blasted the Pentagon’s investigation of Kelly and the FBI’s probe of him and other lawmakers.

“Senator Kelly valiantly served our country as an aviator in the U.S. Navy before later completing four space shuttle missions as a NASA astronaut,” Murkowski wrote in a post on X.

“To accuse him and other lawmakers of treason and sedition for rightfully pointing out that servicemembers can refuse illegal orders is reckless and flat-out wrong,” she wrote. “The Department of Defense and FBI surely have more important priorities than this frivolous investigation.”

How did the last security guarantees from the US (to give up nuclear weapons) work out for Ukraine?

The new Trump plan to end the war in Ukraine would grant Russia parts of eastern Ukraine it does not currently control, in exchange for a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine and Europe against future Russian aggression, a U.S. official with direct knowledge told Axios.

President Trump pardoned his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and a slate of other key figures charged in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a U.S. pardon attorney.

The list includes several high-profile individuals connected to the effort to overturn the 2020 election: Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Boris Epshteyn and others.

The “fake electors” scheme sought to push former Vice President Mike Pence to certify Trump-supporting electors in those critical states instead of the true Electoral College votes cast for former President Biden. It took place in New Mexico and Pennsylvania, as well, though charges were never brought there. On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence declined to do so, and a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Trump previously pardoned hundreds of supporters federally charged in connection to the riot, including those who attacked law enforcement that day. The efforts to challenge the 2020 election results have already had consequences, aside from convictions, for Trump’s allies. Giuliani was disbarred from practicing law in New York and the District of Columbia for making numerous false claims related to the 2020 presidential election and was forced to turn over most of his assets to two election workers he defamed. Eastman, Chesebro and Clark have also faced disciplinary action or proceedings. And several who were pardoned, including Chesebro, Powell and Ellis, had entered guilty pleas to state criminal charges stemming from their post-2020 election work. The Trump attorneys promoted baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud in the aftermath of 2020, and Eastman helped concoct the fake electors’ scheme, which aimed to keep the president in office. Trump faced a federal indictment on charges related to his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, but special counsel Jack Smith moved to toss the case after the president was elected to his second term.

Instead of presenting a new indictment to the full panel after it rejected one of the counts, interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan gave the grand jury’s foreperson an updated version — not seen by the other grand jurors — to sign.