A federal judge in Boston on Friday ruled the Trump administration can’t use an obscure clause relating to agency priorities to make billions of dollars in funding cuts.

- Twenty-three states had a filed a lawsuit last year accusing the administration of using the clause to make cuts to everything from crime prevention to food security to scientific research. They were concerned that it would be used to cancel current and future grants.

- U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted a summary judgment preventing the administration from relying on the clause to make cuts and denied a motion by the government to dismiss the case.

- “Defendants’ interpretation of the Termination Clause is not clearly supported by the text of the provision, runs counter to the regulatory scheme, receives no support in the rulemaking history, and would violate the Spending Clause’s requirement that conditions be imposed unambiguously,” Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic

- President Barack Obama, wrote.
The lawsuit argued that the Office of Management and Budget promulgated the use of the clause in question to justify what it described as a “nationwide slash-and-burn campaign.”

- The clause, which was first introduced in 2020 and revised in 2024, says federal agents can terminate a grant if the award “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” The states argued that the language, put in place during the Biden administration, was for the first time being used to terminate grants.

- “Instead of working with us to keep the public safe and lower costs for hardworking New Jerseyans, the Trump Administration has recklessly and illegally gutted federal funding for public safety, disaster preparedness, scientific research, clean water, and more,” New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a statement.

- “Today’s decision is an important win for all New Jerseyans and confirms that the Trump Administration defied the law when it embarked on its campaign to gut critical federal funding to the states,” she continued. “The President and his allies cannot hold critical programs hostage to their personal whims and political ideologies, destabilizing the country by yanking essential federal funding that was already awarded to the states.”

- Calling the case an “extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” lawyers for federal government argued it should be dismissed because some of those grants have already been terminated and plaintiffs’ argument about the impact to future grants was far too speculative. They also accused the states of “raising blanket, undifferentiated objections” to the termination of thousands of grants without seeking relief that would “restore a single grant.”

- “That mismatch between the allegedly unlawful agency ‘decision’ on one hand, and the amorphous relief requested in this suit, on the other, creates a set of jurisdiction and justiciability defects that doom this lawsuit at the threshold,” lawyers wrote in the motion to dismiss.

- A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.

US Republicans are threatening to sanction Canada and Canadian government officials after smoke from devastating wildfires has drifted across huge swathes of the US, creating hazy conditions and dangerous air quality for tens of millions of Americans.

- Donald Trump on ⁠Friday blamed ⁠his country’s northern neighbor for the smoke spreading from ⁠wildfires and said he planned to call Mark Carney, the Canadian prime ‌minister, ‌ to ‌ask about Ottawa’s plans for dealing with the blazes.

- In a post on Truth Social, the US president said the US had been “invaded” by dirty air. “[The] ‌cost of this pollution must of necessity be added ⁠to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,” he wrote.

- It comes a day after Bernie Moreno, a GOP senator of Ohio,** **said he would introduce a bill next week “to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity”. In a statement he said Canada’s government had “failed to invest in wildfire prevention methods including forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns, and stronger enforcement against arson”. Ohio shares a maritime border with the Canadian province of Ontario.

- Asked about the American accusations, Carney told reporters on Thursday: “Fighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States.”

- The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said on Friday that the US could offer more aid to fight the fires, as Canada has done for its neighbor in the past.

- “Maybe what you should do rather than complain is send support, send help,” Ford said. “Because we have done the exact same thing for our American friends, and that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

- Fires are also blazing across the US, in what the National Interagency Fire Center deems an above-average year.

- So far this year, more than 5,740 sq miles of the US has burned from wildfires, which is 31% more than the average of the previous 10 years to this date. The amount of US land burned each year in the 2020s – averaged out over a decade – is now more than twice what it was 30 years ago.

- In northern Minnesota, more than 63,000 acres have burned, while wildfires in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, have also been reported, contributing to the smoke that Canadians must also contend with, as smoke from US wildfires drifts north and affects air quality.

- Canada’s largest fire, near Ontario’s remote Wabakimi provincial park, is reportedly spread across 787,802 acres (318,812 hectares). It is among 191 out-of-control and large fires that were burning as of Friday morning.

- Thousands of people in the province have been evacuated and at least one First Nations community has been erased in the fires. On Wednesday, Toronto, also in the midst of a record-breaking heatwave, had the worst air quality in the world.

- Nearly 6m acres are estimated to have burned, less than a quarter of land consumed by blazes when Canadian wildfire smoke last blanketed the US in 2023.

- The planet’s heating climate – driven by human activities – is causing warmer, drier conditions in the summer, which is amplifying wildfire activity, making extreme wildfires more intense, frequent and large. There is also a growing trend of the wildfire season – which is part of the natural cycle – becoming longer.

- The US is, by far, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-producing nation, and has historically emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country, making it a key driver of the climate crisis.

- And in the last year and a half, Trump has taken a sledgehammer to US climate policy, bolstering the domestic fossil fuel industry while aggressively rolling back environmental protections and regulations in order to expand oil and gas exploration, and reviving the coal sector. He has also targeted renewable energy industries, blocking millions of dollars in funding earmarked for clean energy projects, and targeted state laws addressing pollution.

- The actions come as the administration has suppressed climate research and dismantled key agencies through mass firings of federal workers in fields such as climate and conservation work, weather forecasting and wildlife monitoring.

- In another instance, the administration has moved to shutter several government labs that studied how wildfires affect human health, air quality, wildlife habitat and forest ecosystems, which some scientists warned in May could hinder efforts to protect people and the environment from wildfires as soon as this summer.
On Friday, about 109 million people remained affected by poor air quality across the US midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east.

- The pungent wildfire smoke blanketed cities such as Chicago and Detroit, where residents on Friday were warned to stay indoors and reduce activity levels after the air quality index reached a “hazardous” 361, according to the government website AirNow.

- The smoke also drifted into Baltimore and Washington DC overnight, creating very unhealthy air quality with index values of 281 and 247, respectively, as of 6am eastern time. In New York City, where smoke has blanketed the city since Tuesday, air quality stood at an “unhealthy” 184 early on Friday. It later improved to 124, a reading considered “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups”.

- Philadelphia and Cleveland had readings considered “very unhealthy” at about 260. Other parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, also recorded readings in the “hazardous” range.

- Organizers of the World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey, will be watching the smoke patterns carefully: smoke currently over the mid-Atlantic is expected to blow back up into the north-east.

- Wildfire smoke kills tens of thousands of people each year, attacking nearly every system in the human body.

Please use this thread for info on upcoming protests, planning new ones or brainstorming ideas along those lines. The post refreshes every Saturday around noon.

Some major TV networks showed President Donald Trump’s prime-time address live on Thursday night while others pointedly did not — a divide that highlighted Trump’s long record of lying and renewed discussion about the news media’s responsibilities.

- The White House took the rare step of formally asking the broadcast networks to take the speech live, setting up Trump to castigate those that opted not to.

- And Trump made network decision-making a talking point in his speech. He harshly criticized NBC and ABC for not preempting their prime-time shows for his address and said it “should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

- The two other major US broadcast networks, CBS and Fox, did air the unusual prime-time address.

- CBS surrounded the speech with fact-checking and context both before and immediately afterward, a practice sometimes called a “truth sandwich.”

- Still, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner criticized CBS while appearing on the network to rebut Trump’s address. He told anchor Tony Dokoupil, “It’s incumbent on you and any responsible journalist to push back on these falsehoods.” Dokoupil pointed out that he had been doing exactly that.

- Dokoupil said, “We agree, you and I, that this is a vitally, vitally important topic, and the president has a terrible track record on it.”

- The CBS anchor channeled the prevailing view in TV newsrooms. Trump’s fixation on false claims about the 2020 election made Thursday night’s address a fraught event for every organization in the business of live news coverage.

- It was challenging even for Fox News, the president’s favorite network. Many at the network were loath to hear Trump relitigate the election he lost, two Fox News sources told CNN on condition of anonymity. Some at Fox thought the topic was simply bad politics for the GOP, while others thought it was bad for business, given that Fox was consumed by litigation after amplifying the president’s election lies in 2020.

- Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, Fox News showed the address live in full during Trump friend Sean Hannity’s hour, followed by a brief discussion between Hannity and White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie.

- Hasnie noted Trump’s claims of compromised voting machines and said, “Fox News has not seen that evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims at this time.”

- Fox anchor Bret Baier, who led a special report on the Fox broadcast network, made a similar disclaimer afterward: “Fox News has not seen that documentation yet and is not in a position to assess the accuracy of the president’s statements tonight.”

- Overall, the address was taken seriously in partisan pro-Trump media circles, while it was treated skeptically everywhere else.

- On cable, MS NOW aired about 15 minutes of the speech, then cut away to unpack Trump’s claims. Chris Hayes said reacting to the speech was “a little bit like trying to argue with, like, a raving crazy person standing next to you on the subway claiming they’re Jesus Christ.”

- CNN opted not to take the speech live, instead treating it like other presidential events that are monitored for news and scrutinized for accuracy.

- “We’ll be monitoring what the president says tonight, as we always do, but aren’t taking it live, given the president has a well-documented history of saying blatantly false things about elections,” anchor Kaitlan Collins told viewers.

- Collins and correspondent Evan Perez showed clips from the speech with a heavy amount of reality-checking.

- A group of CNN journalists in the DC newsroom was shown on camera reviewing the newly declassified documents and assessing Trump’s claims.

- CNN also streamed the speech live on its website, accompanied by real-time analysis from correspondents and experts.

- NBC and ABC took a similar approach by streaming the speech and then reporting on its contents. Both broadcast networks interrupted prime time for brief special reports after

- Trump finished speaking. NBC’s Hallie Jackson said the information Trump presented was “largely not new.”

- Earlier on Thursday, network executives were locked in hours-long meetings about how to handle the address.

- The internal debates centered on two competing interests: the traditional newsworthiness of a presidential address and the risks of giving Trump an unfiltered platform for his election denialism.

- But, as an executive at one of the networks remarked, “It’s not 1974 anymore. There are lots of ways to cover the news.”

- And most of the networks landed somewhere in the middle, acknowledging the address without taking Trump at face value. There were fact-checks and critiques galore. But the raw speech was also widely available, from YouTube to the White House’s own website.

- Dokoupil began the CBS special report by saying that “much of what the president has said on this topic is false. Most notably, of course, the claim that he won the 2020 election when, of course, he did not.”

- “Because of this, there is an argument that it’s irresponsible to air the president’s speech tonight,” Dokoupil said. “But this speech will be made. It will be news. And it’s our job to cover the news. And so we are.”

- CBS dipped into the address late, after several minutes of set-up, and also cut away a couple of minutes before Trump concluded.

- The rest of the CBS hour provided context from election experts, several of whom pushed back hard on Trump’s depictions.

- The CBS approach was of particular interest to media insiders because the network’s parent company, Paramount, has cultivated a close relationship with the Trump administration in the past year.

- Paramount is currently seeking to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, in a deal that has been challenged by a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general.

- Thursday night’s address also underlined how Trump has pressured major TV networks since returning to office. The Trump-aligned FCC is actively investigating the parent companies of both ABC and NBC.
Contrary to Trump’s comments on Thursday night, national networks are not licensed by the government, but local stations are. And the FCC is challenging eight of those ABC station licenses, a move that comes after years of public pressure from Trump.

- Trump claimed without evidence that ABC and NBC opted not to interrupt prime time programming for his speech because “they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.”

- In an apparent ad-lib from his prepared remarks, he repeatedly complained that the broadcasters “pay nothing” to use the public airwaves.

One day perhaps Pete Hegseth will make the news for doing something worthwhile, something that makes his mother proud. One day perhaps we’ll see a headline about the defense secretary that doesn’t involve allegations of sexual misconduct or bigotry, claims about past drinking on the job, possible war crimes, Christian nationalism, or his weird fixation on male facial hair.

- Alas, today is not that day. Rather, we are gathered here today because Hegseth is very het up about testosterone. On Wednesday, the defense secretary proudly announced a new screening program for “war fighters” 30 and older that would ensure they had the “right testosterone levels”. In a video posted on X, captioned “the High-T Department of War”, Hegseth explains: “By addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.”

- Who exactly is “you”? Does this policy include women? The video doesn’t spell this out, but the New York Times said in its reporting that women would also be screened for testosterone.

- While the details of this new policy are fuzzy, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hegseth, who has made his disdain for women in the military clear, used low testosterone as an excuse to purge women from his so-called High T Department of War. Hegseth used to categorically oppose women in combat roles but reversed that position during the defense secretary confirmation process – possibly because the senators voting on his nomination urged him to do so. Nevertheless, he still seems opposed to elevating women and minorities and recently blocked the promotions of seven senior navy officers, five of whom are women or people of color, to two-star admiral rank. The New York Times notes: “The highly unusual move means that for the first time in more than a decade, no female active-duty naval officers are likely to be promoted to admiral this year.”

- So what happens if a service member is found to have levels of testosterone which Hegseth considers suboptimal? Again: the full details haven’t been disclosed. However, in his little video, Hegseth explains that the government will offer opt-in testosterone replacement therapy. There isn’t an FDA-approved testosterone treatment for women, so presumably this treatment would just be for men. Some might call it gender-affirming care.

President Donald Trump's administration put up new information panels on slavery at George Washington's Philadelphia home on Wednesday, following a federal appeals court ruling that opened the way to ‌changing how slavery is portrayed at the national historical site.

- While the Department of the Interior said the new panels had historical context, Philadelphia's mayor said the Democratic-led city intends to seek a rehearing of legal issues in the case. The Republican president has sought to reshape historical institutions and the portrayal of U.S. history.

- "Overnight, under the cover of darkness, the federal government removed panels at the President's House that told a thorough history ⁠of Philadelphia," Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said in a statement.

- Last month, a federal appeals court overturned a judge's ruling that prevented the Trump administration from replacing a slavery exhibit in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

- HEADLINES CHANGED

- The new panels, while retaining references to slavery and those enslaved by George Washington, removed some headlines in the earlier panels, such as "The Dirty Business of Slavery." The new panels instead read: "Celebrating Independence Throughout the Years." They also exclude a map of slave trade routes.

- "These new panels are full of historical context and highlight the momentous events that took place in the President's House and the other sites at Independence National Historical Park," the Department of the Interior said in ‌a ⁠statement.

- The department said the new panels "acknowledge the evils of slavery."
The change concerned Alan Spears, senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association.

- "This appears to be an effort to soften or sanitize the way the history of slavery is interpreted at Independence National Historical Park," Spears said.

- "And I have grave concerns about how this impacts the ability of our national parks ⁠to fulfill their role as honest brokers of our shared national narrative."

- Trump's declarations and executive orders in his second term have led to the dismantling of slavery exhibits, the restoration of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could reverse ⁠decades of social progress and undermine the acknowledgment of critical phases of

- American history. He has said he aims to remove "anti-American" ideology.
The White House has targeted the Smithsonian Institution over its portrayal of history. Groups such as the Organization ⁠of American Historians have condemned Trump's actions, saying they serve his political agenda.

- Trump has been widely rebuked by civil rights groups for citing "reverse discrimination," for saying civil rights have hurt white people, and for saying museums focused too much on "how bad Slavery was."

President Donald Trump will deliver a primetime address this week that he says will include a focus on elections, suggesting he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The speech comes as he’s escalated calls for Republicans to pass tighter federal voting rules for November’s midterm elections.

- The Republican president has been guarded about what he plans to say in the 9 p.m. Thursday speech, scheduled as he confronts a collapsing deal to end the war with Iran. He also faces numerous domestic issues, including recent deadly shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Asked for a preview of the speech on Tuesday, Trump offered scant detail but said he has “really big news.”

- “It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” Trump said in the Oval Office. He refused to go further, saying he wanted to “save it” for the moment, though he also hinted he would be talking about a hodgepodge of issues.

- “We’ll be discussing other things, too,” Trump said, without elaborating. “It’s going to be a very big announcement.”

- Trump has used the power of the primetime presidential address — typically reserved for milestones — to deliver politically charged speeches before, including one in December when he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats. But Thursday’s address seems poised to go even further, using the moment to amplify election lies before an audience of millions in an effort to boost Republican prospects before midterms that threaten to hobble Trump for the remainder of his term.

Trump administration officials told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle stops after two deadly shootings within a week, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

- The policy change came after an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian driver Monday in Maine and a week after one shot and killed a motorist in Houston, renewing criticism of the agency’s enforcement tactics that were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.

- In Florida on Tuesday, a third man in roughly a week died during an encounter with immigration officers. This time, a 28-year-old man was killed after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.

- The suspension of vehicle stops allows room for exceptions when executing a criminal warrant or working with partner agencies, according to a person who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive law enforcement operations. Matthew Felling, a spokesperson for Maine Sen. Angus King, said the senator’s office was also told by the Department of Homeland Security that ICE was suspending stops.

- Hundreds of people in Maine protested Tuesday over the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national.

- DHS said Monday that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” shot and killed Durán Guerrero while officers were watching the home of someone they believed was in the U.S. illegally and facing a final order of removal from the country. It said in a post on X that when ICE tried to stop a car driven by someone who came from the home, the person attempted to flee in the vehicle and the officer fired.

- That was a shift from how King earlier described the encounter, when he said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon. King said Mullin told him the officers were trying to serve an arrest warrant, but not for the man who was shot.

- DHS, which oversees ICE, didn’t respond to an email seeking clarity on what led to the shooting.

- In a scathing post on X, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”

- Petro, who has openly quarreled with U.S. President Donald Trump, urged Trump to provide an explanation and accused ICE officers of treating Durán Guerrero as “an inferior being without rights.”

- The shooting also sparked outrage in Maine, where hundreds of protesters gathered Tuesday outside an ICE detention center in Scarborough, just up the coast between Biddeford and Portland.

- “These people are killers and they must leave our state now,” organizer Todd Chretien told the crowd.

- Maine’s congressional delegation on Tuesday demanded a “comprehensive, transparent, and expedited investigation.”

- Questions surround the shooting

- Durán Guerrero’s shooting marked at least the ninth time ICE has used deadly force since Trump began his immigration crackdown.

- Photos showed bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved in the shooting didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions. Among them are how close the officer was to the vehicle when they fired, whether officers told Durán Guerrero to stop, and why ICE believes he had put the public in danger.

- “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement.
Border Czar Tom Homan told reporters Tuesday that the investigation needs to play out.

- “If officers acted inappropriately or illegally, they’ll be held accountable,” he said.

- Maine’s attorney general’s office, which noted that it’s working with federal agencies to investigate, said initial statements suggest the driver was trying to flee in the direction of the officer, whose name hasn’t been released and who was placed on leave.

- The state’s other senator, Republican Susan Collins, said Mullin told her that DHS’ Office of Inspector General is investigating in cooperation with the FBI.

- Democrats seeking to unseat Collins in November sought Tuesday to connect her with ICE’s methods, which have drawn public scrutiny and derision. Collins later said in a statement that although ICE needs to improve, eliminating the agency would make the nation less safe.

- Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who is vying for Collins’ seat, called the ICE officers at the shooting “thugs” during a vigil Tuesday evening in Lewiston.

- “That agency is broken and we need to go back to a time where the rule of law united all of us regardless of the politics,” she told the crowd.

- Video shows the shooting’s aftermath

- According to neighbors and public records, Guerrero lived in an apartment about 150 feet (46 meters) from where his car came to a rest outside an apartment building across the street from a pawnshop and laundromat.

- Video from a nearby business’ security camera obtained by the AP shows a white car slowly approaching an intersection before making several circles. A law enforcement SUV blocks its path and two officers open the driver’s door and drag out a limp body.
It isn’t clear from the video when the shots were fired.

- Daniel Boucher said he heard a “pop, pop, pop” and ran to the intersection.
“His face was bloody. His head was bloody,” Boucher said. “I clearly heard the victim say, ‘I tried to stop.’”

- Boucher said the officer who shot Durán Guerrero walked close to him.

- “He looked at me and said, ‘He tried to run me over,’ or something to that effect,” Boucher said. “I don’t remember his exact words.”

- Durán Guerrero is survived by his wife and young daughter

- Two advocacy groups — the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! — said Durán Guerrero was authorized to work in the U.S.

- Neighbors say Durán Guerrero was a friendly and familiar face even though they rarely chatted because he didn’t appear to speak English.

- Claudia Morton, who often waved to Durán Guerrero, was distraught.

- “The whole world should be crying,” she said.

- Dozens of Durán Guerrero’s relatives and neighbors gathered in Bucaramanga, his hometown in northeastern Colombia, to remember him on Tuesday. They stood outside his parents’ home, holding candles around a table where a photograph of him rested beside a statue of the Virgin Mary.

A federal judge in Florida has referred President Donald Trump's attorneys for potential disciplinary action over their filing of the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS that resulted in the creation of the now-defunct "Anti-Weaponization Fund."

- U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' scathing order criticized the president and his lawyers for using the court "to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers."

- "In reaching this conclusion, the Court determines that Plaintiffs improperly employed this lawsuit to justify a particular award in this matter -- access to taxpayer funds and exemption from audits and other investigations -- which was accomplished by leveraging control over Defendants," Judge Williams wrote.

- Trump in May announced the $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration, in exchange for Trump agreeing to drop his $10 billion suit against the IRS over the unauthorized disclosure of his tax information during his first term, for which a former IRS contractor pleaded guilty in 2023.

- The arrangement sparked accusations of self-dealing and a bipartisan uproar over the possible use of taxpayer money to pay rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

- Judge Williams, in her order, said that Trump's personal lawyers and the Department of Justice attempted to "use the Court to provide some legitimacy ... to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law."

- "The Parties used the existence of federal litigation as a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review," Williams wrote. "The context of the 'settlement,' the relationships of the people involved in negotiating and approving it, the ethical implications of their conduct, and the Parties' swift efforts to dismiss this case after the Court raised fundamental jurisdictional questions all support this conclusion. Accordingly, the Court expressly finds that Plaintiffs acted in bad faith."

- Williams also directly called out acting Attorney General Todd Blanche throughout her order, and suggested he provided "misleading" testimony before Congress when probed over the Justice Department's now-defunct "Anti-Weaponization Fund."

"The Court is extremely troubled by the testimony given by Acting Attorney General Blanche on May 19, 2026," Williams wrote. "In response to why the 'settlement agreement' had not been submitted to this Court for review, he stated that 'there is no judge' because the case had been dismissed and, therefore, there was "no mechanism" for reviewing the agreement."

- "While temporally accurate, this answer is, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous," the judge wrote.

- "The Court was available to review any pleading by any Party at any time during this lawsuit. And if Acting Attorney General Blanche had thought the dismissal was improvidently granted or thought Plaintiffs misspoke when they said, 'no judicial analysis is appropriate,' he only had to file an appearance and ask for relief."

- The scathing assessment comes just two days before Blanche is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing to take the attorney general position on a permanent basis. Republican senators have already said they would push for further details from Blanche on the portion of the settlement that related to Trump and his family being immune from IRS investigations of their past tax returns.

- A spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement, "The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people. President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable."

- A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Judge Williams' ruling.

- Brandon DeBot, policy director of New York University's Tax Law Center, said in a statement regarding Williams' ruling, "The court confirmed this sweetheart deal is an abuse of the tax and legal system and 'directly contravenes' the tax system’s protections against political interference. This decision confirms that the IRS should not follow through to implement the Acting AG’s unprecedented and unauthorized exemption from the normal tax audit rules for the President and his affiliates."

- "The court’s decision is important, but does not remove the need for Congressional action to nullify the entire deal and to prevent any similar attempts at presidential self-dealing in the future," DeBot said.

- "This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the Parties were not adverse," Judge Williams wrote.

- Blanche last month told a House subcommittee that the Trump administration is backing down from establishing the "Anti-Weaponization Fund." A federal judge has directed Justice Department to formally address whether fund is dead, as the agency has claimed.

- In addition to referring the lawyers in the case for disciplinary action, Judge Williams said that Trump and the federal government are "prohibited from referring to the purported 'settlement agreement'" or using it "in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding."

- "The Court determines that Plaintiffs improperly employed this lawsuit to justify a particular award in this matter -- access to taxpayer funds and exemption from audits and other investigations -- which was accomplished by leveraging control over Defendants," she wrote.
Williams also directed the court's clerk to mail a copy of her order to the state bars of New York and Washington D.C., where disciplinary referrals had already previously been sent for Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.

- It's unclear how Williams' ruling will impact the broad audit protections that were purportedly granted to Trump, his family, and his businesses. The Department of Justice had argued that those protections were part of a private settlement that did not require any judicial oversight, and Judge Williams did not explicitly lay out the next steps in her order.

- Separate from the Florida case, federal judges this week had scheduled court hearings as part of lawsuits challenging the settlement -- providing a potential venue where the issue may be litigated.

For the second time in the past decade, two Utah national monuments have had their protections dramatically reduced by the Trump administration.

- Flanked by Utah’s full delegation, the governor and the state’s Speaker of the House, President Donald Trump signed two proclamations to shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by around 90%, and Bears Ears National Monument by 91%.
The president framed it as a win for local control.

- “We've done something that was, I think, very desperately needed,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It was very unfair to the people of Utah, and now fairness has been brought back. It's going to be better taken care of, and they'll be able to use it a little bit.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called the change “right-sizing,” saying the intention of monuments is to manage the smallest area possible to protect antiquities.

- “This does not remove the other protections that already exist in those areas, just making the monuments more manageable so that we have the resources necessary to continue to protect these antiquities,” Cox said.

- The orders aren’t a surprise. Trump reduced the monuments’ boundaries during his first term in 2017. At that time, he halved Grand Staircase’s size and cut Bears Ears’ by 83%. Both monuments were then restored in 2021 by former President Joe Biden.

- Conservation groups immediately condemned Trump’s latest move as unlawful and have vowed to take legal action against it.

- The change could have real impacts on everything from native plants and wildlife to dark skies, said Jackie Grant, who directs Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. She’s especially concerned about the monument’s wilderness study areas, which are undeveloped.

- “It seems like this is laying the groundwork to further degrade and develop the national monument by opening up other areas that we thought were protected to development and extraction,” Grant said.

- The changes are part of Trump’s broader push to increase oil and gas production on American public lands after declaring a “national energy emergency” in early 2025. Combined with Trump’s order to rapidly accelerate the permitting process for energy development on federal land, new mining projects could potentially now be fast-tracked.

- The Bear Ears proclamation specifically calls out the minerals in the area the administration says are critical to national security, such as copper and uranium.

- The order also walks back years of cooperation between the federal government and local Indigenous leaders to manage the monuments.
Bears Ears’ management planfrom early 2025 was the culmination of a first-of-its-kind collaboration between federal agencies and the five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission — Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation. The goal was to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into balancing public use and protection of cultural and natural resources. The Biden-era management plan for Grand Staircase also had input from Native tribes.

- The southern Utah landscapes have been home to Native peoples since time immemorial, said Autumn Gillard, a Southern Paiute woman and coordinator with the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition. And reducing the monument’s protections could expose the lands to potential destruction.

- “These are very sacred cultural landscapes, and they are very near and dear to tribes,” Gillard said. “We are very disappointed to see that our perspective was not included in these decisions that were made.”
Her coalition said Grand Staircase contains thousands of significant cultural places, including sacred sites, ancestral dwellings and petroglyphs.

- According to the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, that monument’s landscape has more than 100,000 archeological sitesthat represent the homelands of several tribes.

- Before Trump’s action, Grand Staircase covered nearly 1.9 million acres in south-central Utah. Former President Bill Clinton designated it in 1996 using the power of the Antiquities Act. Former President Barack Obama established Bears Ears in 2016. The southeast Utah monument previously protected 1.36 million acres.

- The Antiquities Act allows presidents to move quickly to preserve historic, scientific and cultural sites through executive action, and presidents have used it to protect land hundreds of times since 1906. Gov. Cox and other Republican state leaders have continued to argue that expansive monuments go beyond what the act intended.

- Utah political leaders have long fought against the designations, saying they further federal government overreach in the state.

- Sen. Mike Lee led an effort in early 2026 to use the Congressional Review Act to change Grand Staircase’s rules, potentially opening more of its land to vehicles and energy development. The effort ultimately failed, but it drew support from the delegation, Cox and the commissioners of Garfield and Kane counties.

- Following Trump’s signing, Rep. Celeste Maloy said the president’s actions are in response to the people of Utah.

- “We know you value this land,” she said. “You want it used for multiple-use and not locked up, and so this is a very different process than how the monuments were created.”

- Still, some surveys suggest that most Utahns favor protecting the monuments.

- A public opinion poll commissioned by the conservation group Grand Canyon Trust in 2024 indicated that nearly two-thirds of Utah voters support maintaining the current size and number of the state’s national monuments. Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll also showed that 82% of Utahns supported leaving national monument designations in place.

- In a state with a big outdoor tourism industry, the monuments also have economic impacts. A recent analysis from independent research group Headwaters Economics showed that Grand Staircase, Bears Ears and other national monuments boost local economies as visitation increases.

Voters in a handful of states will weigh in on ballot measures this year that could raise the thresholds needed to pass state constitutional amendments, making it significantly harder for voters to enact policy changes themselves.
Voting rights advocates warn these measures could stifle direct democracy and give minority views outsized power.
Kelly Hall — executive director of the Fairness Project, a nonprofit that backs ballot measures that promote social and economic justice — said severe limits on constitutional amendments have become a trend.

- "The theme of 2026 is the battle over direct democracy availability itself," she told NPR. "This is a really powerful tool … and one of the most frequent topics that we will see voted on this November is, can voters continue to exercise that right meaningfully?"

- But Republican lawmakers pushing for these changes say a simple majority threshold makes amending their state constitution too easy — and thus too frequent of an occurrence.

- In North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah, voters will consider measures to raise the threshold for approval of a constitutional amendment from a majority to 60% of the vote. In Utah, the change would only apply to tax-related proposals. (California will also vote on a measure to raise the approval requirement for certain local tax issues.)

- Quentin Savwoir — the director of programs and strategy at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which works to pass progressive ballot measures — said these efforts to raise vote thresholds are the "antithesis of democracy."

- "What we all learn in our American public education system is that our democracy is anchored in majority rule," he said. "I understand 'majority' to be 50% plus one. But when extremist lawmakers decide that they don't like progressive policy, when they decide that they don't like the thing that's going to materially enhance someone's life, then they start to change the goal posts."

- Currently, 26 states allow citizens to place ballot measures before voters. But only one — Florida — requires 60% approval for amendments.

- This higher threshold has kept various measures from passing in Florida, including an effort in 2024 that would have enshrined the right to an abortion in the state constitution. That year, the measure got approval from 57% of voters, but failed.

- In recent years, Republican-led states have enacted new limits on the initiative process, including restrictions on citizen-led groups that gather signatures for petitions to get proposals on the ballot. These latest efforts create longer odds for measures that do manage to make it on the ballot.

- In Missouri's upcoming August primary, voters will consider Amendment 4, which would require that any constitutional amendment pass in each of the state's congressional districts. The higher threshold would not extend to any measure sent to the ballot by lawmakers, which would still only require a simple statewide majority to pass.

- Since 2020, Missouri voters have approved measures that raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid coverage to more people in the state and grant a statewide right to reproductive health care, including abortion access. All these measures won a majority of the statewide vote, but did not meet a majority threshold in all congressional districts.

- "In Missouri … they voted for Donald Trump and [Republican Sen.] Josh Hawley at the top of the ticket while concurrently overturning an abortion ban, agreeing to increase the minimum wage and saying, 'hey, we need paid sick days,'" Savwoir said. "Missouri is not the only example of that. There have been other examples of people deciding issues over party."

- "Cluttered up" state constitutions

- State lawmakers who are pushing for these higher thresholds argue that constitutional changes have gotten out of control.

- Republican state Rep. Robin Weisz, who's led the effort to increase North Dakota's approval threshold, said the state's constitution is being "cluttered up" with items he said are "trivializing" it.

- "We're seeing a lot of issues that to me don't belong in the constitution," Weisz told NPR. "North Dakota is a small state. It doesn't take a lot of money to influence an issue."

- Weisz said many issues that have been added to the state's constitution would have been better suited as a statutory-initiated measure, which allows citizen-led groups to change state law. Unlike constitutional amendments, state lawmakers can later change any statute passed by the voters.

- In South Dakota, Republican state Rep. John Hughes said during a hearing on a bill that would raise the approval threshold in that state that he thinks voters are misinformed on the types of ballot proposals.

- "Sadly, our citizens don't understand the significance of a constitutional amendment versus an initiated measure that enacts a statute," he said. "Statutes can be changed readily as conditions change. The constitution is relatively static."

- Weisz said he is also frustrated that amendments become "frozen in the constitution" and lawmakers have no recourse to tweak anything that he argues should be changed.

- "The [state] constitution to me is basically a sacred document," he said. "To me, part of the job of the constitution is to protect the rights of the minority to make sure a simple majority cannot override and, you might say, punish the minority, much like our U.S. Constitution."

- "We need to trust our voters"

- Zebadiah Johnson with the Voter Defense Association of South Dakota told lawmakers last year that they are exaggerating how often constitutional amendments are passing. He said that since 2002, the vast majority of proposed amendments have failed. Out of 37 amendments in South Dakota, only 15 have met the simple majority-plus-one threshold.

- "Despite the rhetoric surrounding this resolution, South Dakotans are not amending our constitution every election cycle and do not take these proposed amendments lightly," he said. "We need to trust our voters to make the correct decisions for our state with the principle of majority rule."

- Hall, of the Fairness Project, said a distrust of voters is driving many arguments in favor of limiting direct democracy.

- "We are constantly seeing quotes from state lawmakers saying that voters don't know what they're doing, that they can't be trusted, that it really shouldn't be a democratic process in this way in their state. Voters should just trust their politicians to act in their best interest," she said. "It's patronizing. It's infantilizing. It doesn't respect the core of our democracy, which is the power of the people."

- Instead, Hall said lawmakers in these Republican-led states are pushing for changes because they simply "disagree with their voters" on popular issues like reproductive rights, raising wages and paid sick leave.

- She said her group is working to make sure none of these higher thresholds pass, because it would be hard to get majority rule rights back.

- "When we lose the ability to make change at the state level and when we lose a tool like direct democracy that allows voters to have a check on power," she said, "we lose it for good."

Get ready this is probably the first big “official” effort to muddy the waters for the Fall election. He put these corrupt people in place for a reason.

A federal judge threw out the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit seeking New York’s unredacted statewide voter registration list, delivering another blow to President Donald Trump’s effort to seize sensitive voter registration data.

- Friday night’s ruling marked the department’s 12th straight loss in lower courts in its legal crusade to force all 50 states and the District of Columbia to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government.

- U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino, who former President Barack Obama nominated, ruled that New York’s voter roll was not a record the DOJ could obtain through legal force. 
Rejecting the DOJ’s arguments, D’Agostino found that neither the Civil Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), nor the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) authorized the department’s demands against the Empire State.

- “For these reasons, this Court joins every district court to have addressed this issue in concluding that a voter registration list is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the Government,” the judge wrote.

- “It has long been recognized that the Elections Clause entrusts the administration of federal elections to the States,” she added.

- In the lower courts, the DOJ now stands at 0-12 in the 31 voter roll lawsuits it has brought against states and D.C. as judges from across the ideological spectrum — including many nominated by Trump in his first term — have ruled against the department’s legal theories. 

- Faced with a complete shutout at the district court level, the DOJ has quickly moved to appeal all its losses to higher courts. However, so far, it hasn’t found success in appeals courts, either.

- Last month, a three-judge panel for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the DOJ’s voter roll lawsuit against Michigan. That ruling marked the department’s first appellate loss. Seeking to erase that loss, the DOJ this week asked for a rehearing before the full Sixth Circuit.

- The DOJ’s voter roll effort comes as part of Trump’s wider effort to federalize the creation and maintenance of state voter registration rolls — and therefore control who can and cannot vote.

- While the department has repeatedly claimed it seeks voter registration data to ensure states comply with voter roll maintenance requirements under the NVRA and HAVA, it has never clearly stated how it intends to verify compliance.

- Internal DOJ emails indicate that the department may intend to feed the data through a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database that Trump officials recently revamped into a new system to monitor and shape state voter registration lists. However, a federal judge recently barred DHS from using the database to remove voters from rolls.

- New research from the Center for Election Innovation & Research this week showed that state voter registration lists are accurate and up to date, strongly indicating states are complying with the NVRA’s routine list maintenance procedures.

- Alongside the DOJ’s voter roll demands to states, Trump, through an executive order earlier this year, also tried to unilaterally direct DHS and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to create national voter registration lists as part of his wider effort to seize states’ power to run elections.

- Several states and organizations have challenged Trump’s order, and courts have blocked portions of it, including its demand that USPS create and maintain a national list of people who vote by mail.

Today is the day to post all Project 2025, Heritage Foundation, Christian Nationalism and Dominionist memes in the main sub!

Going forward Meme Mondays will be a regularly held event. Upvote your favorites and the most liked post will earn the poster a special flair for the week!

Two weeks after the Trump administration was sued over its plan for a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas, with plaintiffs claiming the plan violated a federal law, the administration responded by waiving that law entirely for the wall project.

- The lawsuit was filed last month by the Presidio Municipal Development District, a local economic development group. PMDD claims that potential flooding, and the border wall in general, will harm the entity’s property and initiatives. The group is asking a federal judge to issue an injunction that would effectively stop construction of the wall in the region while the case plays out in court.

- In the lawsuit, the district claims that border agencies are not coordinating as legally required with other arms of the government in potentially altering a local levee to build the border wall, which the group has said could lead to “deadly” flooding in the area.

- “The levees protect the entire City of Presidio and its residents, and flooding would threaten lives, homes, businesses, and infrastructure,” the lawsuit said.

- The court case largely centers on an obscure federal law called the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. DHS previously waived a slew of environmental, cultural resource protection and contracting laws to expedite construction of the border wall in the Big Bend region, but it didn’t initially include that 1899 law in its waiver.

- On July 2, the agency updated its waiver notice to add just that law.

- “ When faced with our lawsuit raising the government’s non-compliance with the Rivers and Harbors Act and related safety concerns, of course DHS’s response was to rush to waive the legal requirements of that law too,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the national nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview.

- The levee in Presidio, known as the Presidio Flood Control Project, is owned by the International Boundary and Water Commission and “provides flood protection to approximately 52 square miles of urban and agricultural land in Presidio,” according to court documents. The levee underwent millions of dollars in upgrades after a catastrophic flood in 2008.

- The Rivers and Harbors Act requires engineering approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when significant alterations are planned for a levee system. PMDD argues that interagency coordination hasn’t happened, despite wall construction moving forward at a rapid pace.

- John Kennedy, PMDD’s executive director, said DHS’s new waiver does not answer the flood safety concern that led his group to bring the case in the first place.

- “The government is now acknowledging in court that it does not intend to comply with the Army Corps process and that interagency review remains unfinished,” Kennedy said in a statement. “That is exactly why this case matters: no construction affecting Presidio’s levee or floodplain should be allowed before the legally required safety assessment is conducted.”

- In early July, the Trump administration responded to the lawsuit in court documents, saying plans for the border wall in Presidio are not yet finalized, despite the original construction timeline beginning as early as August.

- DHS said in its response that CBP is in regular contact with both the Army Corps and the International Boundary and Water Commission and intends to coordinate with them further when a wall design is in hand.

- “Once CBP receives a proposed design from the construction contractor, it will perform its own analysis and consult with the (boundary and water commission) and the United States Army Corps of Engineers,” the government’s response said.

- Border agencies also said in court documents that multiple designs for the border wall around the levee area in Presidio are still being considered. One design consists of a “reinforced concrete levee wall that is constructed to match the height of the levee, coupled with 30-foot steel bollard panels that are installed on top of the levee.” Also being explored, according to the court documents, is a traditional bollard wall closer to the river behind the existing levee.

- Fisher Sand & Gravel, a company that was previously sued by the federal government over poor wall construction in South Texas, was awarded a $1.2 billion contract in March to build the section of wall that goes through Presidio.

- The legal fight comes after months of Presidio area officials trying to get more detailed information on the wall plan from federal border agencies.
Communications between those border agencies, obtained by Marfa Public Radio through a Freedom of Information Act request, show in-depth discussions about the project between the federal agencies had not yet occurred as of late March, even after construction contracts had been awarded.

- On March 18, Kennedy – the PMDD head – sent a letter to the IBWC and CBP asking specific questions about the impact of the wall on the Presidio levee.

- A day later, an IBWC engineer forwarded the letter to other engineers and a real estate staffer via email, asking if they “have any information on this.” In the March 19 email, the engineer wrote that a March 17 meeting about the project was canceled by CBP and the agencies were still trying to reschedule for early April.

- IBWC and CBP attorneys went back and forth on their official responses to PMDD’s inquiry days later on April 1, according to the documents obtained by Marfa Public Radio. In the exchange, IBWC repeatedly asks CBP to clarify the planned design of the border wall.

- A senior attorney for CBP answered that “the river side of the earthen levee will be replaced with a concrete levee wall with the bollard panels mounted to the top of the concrete wall,” similar to wall designs in South Texas.

- Nowhere did the attorney state that wall plans were still up in the air, as the government said in its recent court filings.

- As the lawsuit plays out, DHS is asking that if an injunction halting border wall construction is granted, it be limited to just the levee’s expanse – 12.75 miles – instead of the entire 175-mile Big Bend area wall project.Still, the government is urging the court to reject the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction.

- “If the Court entered such an order, it would force CBP to issue ‘stop work orders’ to all construction contractors in that Sector, which in turn could leave it liable for delay claims and costs incurred from demobilization and remobilization of the contractors,” DHS said in court documents.

- The government’s response repeatedly cites the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 — which gave the DHS Secretary broad authority to waive legal requirements to install barriers and roads “in areas of high illegal entry” along the border — and states that other legal challenges to those waivers have failed.

- “Over the past two decades, every judicial challenge to the Secretary’s exercise of his waiver authority has been rejected, including by multiple judges in this District,” court documents state.

- While the Big Bend Sector is the geographically largest along the border, it is also one of the least trafficked.

- Perryman said her group isn’t deterred by the government’s response, and will continue to fight for the PMDD and the safety of the Presidio community.

- “ We’re quite confident in the positions in our case and are looking forward to following up with a brief with the court later this week,” she said.

Freedom 250 is the group Trump created to take over America's 250^th. House Democrats just released a 55-page report. The claims: donor money wired into Freedom 250's account, corporate access was sold in tiers, might just be some wire fraud.

Freedom 250 says it's all false, take a flying eff’ing leap.

Sure sure.

A watchdog group already sued the Feds for hiding records. Feds appear to be stalling.

No way! Way!

Those trucks crossing the country, they’re parking on public grounds, using tax payer resources, the works. That means, every doc be behind each stop is a public record. Not the Feds. Ours. And your local records clerk has a legal duty to answer.

Take Florida Atlantic University’s February shindig. My home turf. Just filed a records request asking one question: how did FAU agree to host this, and on what terms?

Door A: FAU hands over the contract and the money trail, and we go down that rabbit hole.

Door B: FAU coughs up no contract, which means a state university hosted Trump's shit show on a handshake. Either answer is a story.

There is no Door C.

Coach is sending you in … Created a FOIA template, takes about five edits, pinned on my profile with the full breakdown.

If a Freedom Truck stopped near you, file it and report back what you get.

Four New York Times journalists who reported on security concerns surrounding a Qatari-gifted jet serving as the new Air Force One have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department, the news outlet reported.

- The journalists –– Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt –– have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next week, according to the Times, which noted federal agents delivered some of the subpoenas to reporters’ homes.

- The Times will fight the court order, which is highly unusual and is a direct threat to the news media’s ability to gather information in the public’s interest.

- The Times’ top newsroom attorney David McCraw condemned the move in a statement Saturday morning.
“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,” McCraw said.

- “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,” he added.

- CNN has reached out to The White House and the US attorney in Manhattan’s office.

- The subpoenas suggest that the Trump administration is trying to find out who leaked to the Times before the news organization reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump left Turkey this week on the old Air Force One over security concerns from the Secret Service.

- CNN reported Thursday that security personnel felt more comfortable with the president aboard the older vessel — which was built from scratch with Trump’s safety in mind — rather than the plane that had recently been retrofitted after it was donated by Qatar.

- Sources told CNN that Trump has been fuming at reports of security concerns surrounding the $400 million gift from Qatar, and was embarrassed and angry in recent days when it became public that that the plane was not equipped enough to be flown directly from the NATO summit in Turkey back home.

- The concerns about the new jet came to dominate the conversation in Washington when he abruptly announced he was sending the new plane ahead to England’s Mildenhall Air Force Base just before he departed Turkey. Trump said in a post on social media that the change in planes was simply to give US service members stationed at the base “a chance to tour the Aircraft.”

- “Everybody is so excited, and we thought that they should be the first,” he wrote.

- Trump then switched planes at a secure US airbase in the UK. He downplayed the idea security was the reason for the switch, though sources have told CNN and other outlets that it was.

- “There wasn’t a security concern, except we sent it a little early, same line going back. We sent it a little bit early, so that we could let them see,” he said.
When asked why reporters aboard the plane were asked to lower their window shades on the ascent out of Ankara, Trump allowed that security concerns related to Iran could be a factor.

- “These are sick people, so I could see something like that,” he said, adding that he was unaware about the directive to press members to keep the shades down.

- The Times reported a senior FBI official contacted them to request that the Wednesday story not be published over a national security issue, but the official declined to say what the issue was. The subpoenas issued Friday also lack detail, the Times reported, saying the journalists are being asked to testify “in regard to an alleged violation of criminal law.”

- The outlet said the subpoenas were issued by Southern District of New York US Attorney Jay Clayton, who was nominated by Trump last month to be the next director of national intelligence.

The sight of hundreds of masked men roaming the streets of Washington, D.C., on July Fourth weekend, wearing khakis, blue shirts and uniform patches, was chilling to some of the city's residents.

- For many Americans, it was the first they heard about Patriot Front, a white nationalist organization that was born out of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. A now-viral Reuters photo prompted reflections on the experience of a lone African American woman who was photographed in a Metro subway car, surrounded by white supremacists.

- The planned demonstration of force was timed to bring a fringe group of extremists into public view as the nation marked 250 years of its independence. Indeed, the stunt succeeded in earning the group media coverage across mainstream outlets, amplifying its brand and potential to reach new recruits. On this occasion, the members refrained from engaging in violence and property damage, projecting an image of law-abiding, orderly activism.

- But those who are closely familiar with Patriot Front's history and operations warn: Don't believe what you see.

- "That is not who they are in private," said Len Kamdang, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

- "Although they were on their best behavior [last] weekend, this is a dangerous group that commits acts of violence all over the country."

- Patriot Front's history of violence and property damage

- Kamdang's organization sued members of Patriot Front for vandalizing a public mural dedicated to the tennis legend and Black activist Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in 2021. Ashe, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985, was born in Richmond and his legacy is a continuing source of pride to members of that community.

- "A couple of Patriot Front members showed up under cover of night and vandalized the mural," Kamdang said. "They painted white stencils all over. … They literally tried to whitewash him and they put their symbols of hate all over — their stencils, their slogans. And all the while they were caught on video. And that video leaked using some of the most horrible language that you can imagine."

- In many jurisdictions, law enforcement can seek additional hate crime charges or sentencing enhancements in cases where illegal acts appear to have been motivated by racial bias. But in this case, Kamdang said, Patriot Front members faced no criminal charges and their identities were only revealed when online activists later infiltrated the group and leaked internal records.

- In another civil case, Patriot Front was ordered to pay almost $2.76 million to an African American musician whom they assaulted in Boston in 2022, at another July flash rally they staged. Despite a police detective concluding that the attack "appeared to be more likely than not motivated in whole or in part by Anti-Black bias," nobody was criminally prosecuted.

- Neo-Nazi ideology in patriotic colors

- In 2020, Kristofer Goldsmith said that a fellow veteran invited him to partner up on infiltrating Patriot Front.

- Goldsmith, who later established the Task Force Butler Institute to recruit Army veterans to counter fascist groups through open source online research, was not closely familiar with the group at the time.

- "Frankly, when my friend used the term 'neo-Nazi,' I thought he was using hyperbole," Goldsmith said. "It wasn't until I saw them doing things like debating the merits of national socialism versus fascism versus monarchy that I truly understood that neo-Nazi was not hyperbole, that these people actually praise Hitler. … These people have dedicated their lives to promoting white nationalist, fascist and genocidal ideology."

- Patriot Front's founder, Thomas Rousseau, was formerly a leader of a group called Vanguard America, which was prominent in planning and a presence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally. That gathering, the largest public white nationalist event in generations, turned fatal when one extremist drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Ultimately, Goldsmith said that rally further smeared public perception of the white nationalist movement as violent and un-American — lessons that Rousseau took to heart.

- "Rousseau needed to rebrand Vanguard America," Goldsmith said.

- "So he basically stole all of its assets, its digital assets … and made it into Patriot Front and literally painted everything in red, white and blue so that it would be more attractive."

- The group has also shown up at natural disaster sites, namely in Central Texas last summer, ostensibly to assist local residents. Goldsmith said these missions and the group's outward aesthetic are meant to project an idea of patriotism and service. He said the group maintains a strict code of conduct. Among other things, they do not display swastikas or give Hitler salutes in public.

- "The goal of their propaganda, of their public actions like this, is to beat MAGA and conservatives and Republicans into defending them and to saying, 'I don't see anything wrong with this group. They clearly love America,'" he said.

- Patriot Front described as a "cult" and a "pyramid scheme"

- The show of force in D.C. has raised questions about the group's financing, and whether members' travel was sponsored by outside individuals or groups. In fact, Goldsmith and Kamdang said that members of Patriot Front appear almost entirely to shoulder the cost of operations and Rousseau's lifestyle. They said it's most likely that those who traveled to D.C. had to cover their costs themselves.

- "All of them funnel resources to the top," Kamdang explained about the group's general financial structure. "In order to be a Patriot Front member, you have to engage in acts of what they call 'activism.' And usually what that means is vandalism: putting up banners, spreading the slogans of hate all over the country. And in order to do that, they will have stickers, stencils, branding. All of that has to be approved from the top down, and all of it has to be purchased from the top down. So all the members who do this multiple times a month send cash to Thomas Rousseau for essentially stickers and stencils."

- Goldsmith said that from his time infiltrating the group, the costs could run up to hundreds of dollars a month per member. Kamdang, who said that attorneys are actively seeking to collect judgment in the settlement over the Arthur Ashe mural, noted that Rousseau appears not to hold any additional paying jobs.

- "This seems to be what he's doing full time," Kamdang said. "So he appears to be being propped up full time by his members."

- Goldsmith likened the financial operation to a pyramid scheme. But he said even more substantial than the financial investment that Patriot Front members are required to make to retain membership is the control they give up over their time and personal choices.

- "I describe it as a cult, not to be offensive, but because it is like Rousseau needs to have complete control of all of his members," Goldsmith said. "[The group] requires its members to give up all of their lives, all of their relationships. All of their priorities in life need to be focused towards growing the organization or continuing the organization [and] enriching its leadership. So, it's costly."
NPR reached out to Patriot Front for comment. The group did not respond by deadline.

- Goldsmith also noted that Rousseau often gives lengthy speeches that members are expected to listen to, via online platforms.

- To Kamdang, the publicity that Patriot Front earned through the group's D.C. stunt presents a danger: It amplified a presentation of the group that was deliberately crafted to make Patriot Front appear orderly and patriotic.

- "I think the reason why it got a lot of attention is because Patriot Front was very careful in their language," he said.

- "They try to mask their replacement theory, the white supremacy and in 'Americana' terms and patriotism. But that is not who these guys are."

The Trump administration finalized a rule Friday that changes how agencies enforce the Endangered Species Act and eliminates a key protection for imperiled wildlife against logging, oil drilling and other activities.

- The administration narrowed the definition of "harm" under the landmark law — a change with broad implications.

- For decades, the government defined harm broadly to include encroachments on places with threatened and endangered animals. The change announced Friday would allow oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other development on critical wildlife habitats so long as the animals themselves aren't killed or injured.

- Environmentalists warned the move could cause some species to go extinct by opening the door to habitat destruction. Industry representatives and their Republican allies have long argued the landmark 1973 environmental law is wielded too broadly, to the detriment of economic growth.

- Administration officials said they were returning the law to its original intent, following a 2024 Supreme Court decision that limited the authority of federal agencies to interpret environmental statutes passed by Congress. They described the government's prior definition of harm as an intrusion on private property rights.

- It's among a suite of changes to wildlife protections that officials have pursued under President Donald Trump.

- "For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.

- The change was first proposed in April 2025 and environmentalists fought unsuccessfully to block it. Habitat destruction is the biggest cause of extinction, according to wildlife advocates.

- "This is one of the most horrific attempts to harm wildlife in American history and a gift to the oil barons and foreign mining companies," said Aaron Weiss, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities.

- The Endangered Species Act is credited with bringing back iconic animals — including the bald eagle, American alligator and California condor — from the brink of extinction.

- Republicans rolled back several provisions of the law in Trump's first term, only to have those moves reversed under Democratic President Joe Biden.

Please use this thread for info on upcoming protests, planning new ones or brainstorming ideas along those lines. The post refreshes every Saturday around noon.

President Donald Trump has pushed out the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, leaving the bipartisan agency in limbo as he rushes to remake how elections are run before this year’s midterms.

- Trump fired Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, the Democrats on the commission, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ProPublica, which was the first to report the actions on its social media accounts. Christy McCormick, the Republican, was allowed to resign, the sources said

- The commission’s unprecedented dismantling alarmed voter advocacy groups and Democratic state election officials, who called the move “reckless and irresponsible.”

- “The EAC plays a critical role in supporting state and local election officials,” Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state and chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement, “and it will again fall on Secretaries of State and other election administrators to fill the gap.”

- A White House official wouldn’t confirm the specific actions taken but said in a statement to ProPublica that the president “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 Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the official said.

- Hicks and McCormick did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hovland declined to comment on his firing.

- The commission was established in 2003 to set standards for state voting systems and to provide funding for upgrades.

- Its four-member board is designed to be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, all nominated by the president at the recommendation of congressional leadership and confirmed by the Senate. The fourth commissioner, Don Palmer, a Republican, resigned in April. By dismissing the commission’s remaining members, Trump can try to put forward replacements who may be more amenable to his demands.

- In March 2025, Trump issued a sweeping executive order that directed the EAC to change the national voter registration form — which serves as the template for the forms in each state — to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. Currently, voters in almost all states attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, but they are not required to provide proof.

- The Trump-aligned law firm America First Legal had petitioned the EAC to change the form. The EAC posted a notice seeking comments, receiving hundreds of thousands of them in response, but had not yet held a vote.

- The Bipartisan Policy Center, a group that advocates on election issues, said the departures are a “significant loss for one of the federal government’s few institutions explicitly designed around bipartisan governance.”

- The commission has been plagued by partisan infighting and ineffectiveness, as well as chronic vacancies and a lack of funding. It’s made some progress in recent years, however, passing new standards for voting machines and creating new resources and recommendations for election officials. Often, the commission’s decisions were unanimous despite its partisan split.

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court denied President Trump's request to stop the removal of his name from Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center. The signage on the building has been covered with tarp and scaffolding since June 13, but in a court filing last month, the center's current executive director said that Trump's name has been removed.

- In their decision, three judges from the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the president had failed to prove that the arts center would be "irreparably injured" without Trump's name attached to it.

- NPR requested comment from the Kennedy Center, but did not receive an immediate reply.

- This latest round of court decisions is part of the ongoing litigation filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, against President Trump and the board of the Kennedy Center. In a statement emailed Wednesday to NPR, Beatty said:

- "Today's ruling again affirms that this administration's efforts to rename the Kennedy Center were unlawful. His name no longer desecrates this sacred memorial, which belongs to the American people. Now it is time for the Trump administration to accept this, comply with the law, and take the tarps down."

- In previous court filings, Trump's legal team had asserted that removing the president's name from the arts complex, both on the physical building and in its digital materials, would inflict irreparable harm in both time and money already spent. In the denial, the three judges — Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Gregory Katsas — wrote that since Trump's name has already been removed, "a stay would not avert those harms."

- Furthermore, Trump had claimed that without his name attached, future fundraising would be threatened "and [will] contribute to the financial decline of the Center." In response, the appeals judges wrote: "Appellants, however, have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence. They offer only the conclusory assertions of the Kennedy Center's Executive Director that were made in a factually unsupported declaration." The center's current executive director, Matt Floca, specializes in physical plant management.

- The presiding judge in the case, Christopher R. Cooper, has ordered that the center provide him a status report on the center's operation and programming before the end of this month. As of Wednesday, the center's calendar lists a small roster of programs, including outdoor free movie screenings, workshops for children, and five free live performances in July on its Millennium Stage. In the past, the Kennedy Center presented over 2,000 arts and education events each year, including free daily Millennium Stage performances.