What exactly Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was doing at the scene of the FBI’s raid on Fulton County’s election administration hub last week remains, for now, unclear. Congressional Democrats as well as Trump’s own Deputy Attorney General and close alley Todd Blanche have acknowledged the move was abnormal.
Continue reading “Trump Spoke to FBI Agents After Fulton County Raid”The Fight Is Upon Us: What The Right to Vote Looks Like on Trump’s Terrain of Violence
Both the calendar and the events in Minneapolis have brought the midterm elections suddenly into focus. We had a special election in Texas in which Democrat Taylor Rehmet scored a double-digit victory in a state senate election in a district Donald Trump won by 17 points just last year. This also comes as polls, which for much of 2025 were more tepid for Democrats than many hoped, have moved more clearly into wave territory. The upshot of all these data points is that Democrats, unsurprisingly, are prepped for a strong midterm showing … as long as the votes are fairly counted. Or to put it a different way, if Donald Trump is looking to avoid losing the House in November and possibly the Senate, him getting more popular or running a super good midterm campaign probably isn’t a viable course of action.
We know about Donald Trump and elections. We had a preview of it in 2020. And now we’re in Trump II where the president has already gone a long way to building a highly politicized domestic paramilitary force which is under his direct personality authority. Many people have rightly been worried for months about the president using ICE to harass voters or create a climate of fear in key cities on election day. Remember that right after the killing of Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to the governor of Minnesota offering to withdraw ICE from Minneapolis if the state would essentially surrender its sovereign governing authority. Along with surrendering public assistance rolls and abolishing sanctuary policies, Bondi demanded access to the state’s voting rolls to free Minneapolis from ICE occupation. So the nexus beyond violence and occupation and the state’s sovereign authority to administer elections no longer has to be imagined. It’s right there.
Continue reading “The Fight Is Upon Us: What The Right to Vote Looks Like on Trump’s Terrain of Violence”Turmoil at FEMA Adds to the Revolt Against Kristi Noem
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
Kristi Noem faces intensifying public scrutiny over her leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. Criticism of the former South Dakota governor has focused on her handling of the killing of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent and her oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. The controversies have prompted calls from Democratic lawmakers — and a small but noteworthy group of Republicans — for her resignation or impeachment.
The immediate flashpoint has been the January 24 killing of Pretti, which occurred during ongoing protests in Minneapolis. Noem initially described Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, as a “domestic terrorist,” a narrative repeated by others in the Trump administration. Her account was almost immediately contradicted by numerous videos that showed Pretti was unarmed and restrained when federal agents shot him repeatedly.
“She should be out of a job,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said after the videos emerged. While President Donald Trump has publicly said Noem’s position is secure, a number of potential successors have reportedly emerged,including Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin and Lee Zeldin, who leads the Environmental Protection Agency.
Noem’s handling of the killing — which came two weeks after an immigration agent in Minneapolis fatally shot protestor Renee Good — follows sustained criticism of her management of FEMA. Lawmakers, disaster response experts, and disaster survivors say her policies have slowed emergency response and delayed recovery funding. Long before the crisis in Minnesota, concerns were building over her approach to FEMA preparedness and spending and its response to calamities like last year’s devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country.
Continue reading “Turmoil at FEMA Adds to the Revolt Against Kristi Noem”Everything Effed Up About the Don Lemon Case
Where to Even Start?
The news of former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s arrest in connection with the St. Paul church protest he covered last month was just breaking Friday morning, so I want to circle back on the many new details that have emerged since the news first came out.
- Lemon wasn’t the only journalist arrested. Georgia Fort, an independent journalist in Minneapolis who is the vice president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, was arrested at her home Friday. She posted video on Facebook of agents outside her door.
- DHS components involved the arrests. In Lemon’s case, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations performed the arrest, NBC News reports, citing the arrest warrant. According to Status, just DHS officers were involved. In Fort’s case, one of the officers she filmed at her door was wearing a patch emblazoned with “DEA.”
- DOJ got Lemon indictment after magistrate rejected arrest warrant. The federal indictment of Lemon, Fort and seven protester codefendants was handed down Thursday by a grand jury in Minnesota. They are being charged for the church protest under an abortion-related law: the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994.
- The Trump administration villainizes Lemon. Preening over the arrest of Lemon, the Trump administration trafficked in racist tropes about him. The White House itself posted this to X:
Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the DOJ Civil Rights Division, retweeted Mike Davis calling Lemon a “klansman”:
Quote of the Day
The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic, on the church protest criminal case:
On the basis of the record available so far, the case against them appears factually weak, legally shoddy, and marred by a baffling series of procedural irregularities that raise serious questions about the Justice Department’s ability to win in court. This prosecution is best understood not as law enforcement but as propaganda, junk intended purely to get attention. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.
Pretti Shooting
- Under duress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reversed course and purported to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal CBP shooting of Alex Pretti, even as he downplayed the significance of the investigation. It remains unclear how thorough the investigation will be and whether it will follow the past practices of the FBI and DOJ Civil Rights Division in use-of-force investigations. Blanche is still refusing to authorize a civil rights investigation of the earlier fatal ICE shooting of Renée Good.
- ProPublica has identified the CBP agents who shot Pretti: Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Both men were deployed to Operation Metro Surge from south Texas.
Bovino Went on ‘Antisemitic Rant’
CBP commander Gregory Bovino mocked the Orthodox Jewish faith of Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen to other lawyers in Rosen’s office, the NYT reports:
Mr. Bovino, who has been the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, used the term “chosen people” in a mocking way, according to the people with knowledge of the call. He also asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish criminals don’t take weekends off, the people said. …
During the call, with a handful of prosecutors listening in, Mr. Bovino complained that Mr. Rosen had been unreachable for portions of the weekend because of Shabbat. Mr. Bovino’s remarks followed his complaints about having difficulty reaching Mr. Rosen.
A CBS News source briefed on the incident described Bovino’s alleged remarks as an “antisemitic rant.”
Mass Deportation Watch
- In an order Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Menendez declined to end Operation Metro Surge, ruling that Minnesota’s claims that it was being punished or unfairly treated by the Trump administration were insufficient to justify blocking the operation.
- In an internal memo last week, ICE expanded the power of federal agents to conduct warrantless arrests of people believed to be undocumented immigrants if they are “likely to escape” before an arrest warrant can be obtained, the NYT reports.
- Adrian Conejo Arias and his 5-year-old son Liam were released from immigration detention following Saturday’s court order from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of San Antonio.
Sign of the Times
DHS has confirmed a measles outbreak at the ICE detention center in Texas where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was held.
The Purges: FBI Edition
The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office was forced out this month after questioning the DOJ’s renewed push to probe Fulton County’s role in the 2020 election, which culminated last week with the FBI seizing voting records, MSNow reports.
Ethics Complaint Against Boasberg Dismissed
The bogus ethics complaint lodged against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi has been cursorily dismissed in a seven-page order by Jeffrey Sutton, the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
John Roberts Demands SCOTUS NDAs
NYT:
In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.
It’s not clear whether the justices themselves were asked to sign the non-disclosure agreement.
Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stymied
A U.S. intelligence official made a a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last May that is so highly classified it is locked in a safe and the whistleblower’s own lawyer hasn’t been able to see it, the WSJ reports:
The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard’s office rejects that characterization, contending it is navigating a unique set of circumstances and working to resolve the issue.
The complaint “implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s,” according to the WSJ.
The whistleblower’s lawyer is Andrew Bakaj, who represented a CIA officer whose 2019 whistleblower complaint sparked Trump’s first impeachment.
The Destruction: DC Skyline Edition
- Trump threatens to do to the Kennedy Center what he did to the East Wing: Faced with audiences and artists abandoning the Trump-run and renamed Trump-Kennedy Center, President Trump announced on social media that he would shut down the performing arts center for two years beginning this summer for the “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” of the official presidential memorial to President John F. Kennedy.
- Trump pursues another colossally mis-proportioned vanity project: Like his misshapen White House ballroom, President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch at one end of the Memorial Bridge would soar to 250-feet, dwarfing the 70-foot Lincoln Memorial at the opposite end.
The Corruption: UAE Edition
WSJ:
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. …
The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.
2026 Ephemera
How Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a ruby red state Senate seat in Texas that Trump carried by 17 points.
Good Read
TPM’s Hunter Walker watched the Melania documentary so you don’t have to:
The sole revelations to be found in “Melania” are about how brazen the Trumps are and about their all encompassing, incredible lack of self awareness. With so much of the movie taking place in the days leading up to the inauguration, Melania is shown tromping around the gilded confines of the family’s private residences; the deranged rococo Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago, and their obscene mirrored apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. The homes display the kind of opulence that has long been associated with authoritarian regimes. Yet, while other dictatorial leaders like Saddam Hussein, the Marcoses in the Philippines, and the Mubaraks in Egypt largely had the decency to hide their luxurious lifestyles from the people until they were overthrown, Melania shamelessly and deliberately parades her treasures before the cameras in a film she helped produce.
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Triumph Of The Bill: Amazon’s $75 Million ‘Melania’ Movie Is A Corrupt, Fascistic Cinema Fest
In the 104 minutes of the movie “Melania,” there are only two real hints of how dangerous our world and politics have become.
The supposed documentary on First Lady Melania Trump is largely set in the 20 days before her husband, President Donald Trump, returned to office for the second time last January. At one point, the couple are seen with staffers discussing grand plans for “a million” people to line the streets of Washington for the swearing-in ceremony. Staffers inform the family that they will ride in a motorcade along Pennsylvania Avenue and that, as per tradition, they will have a few opportunities to get out of the car and wave at the crowd.
Continue reading “Triumph Of The Bill: Amazon’s $75 Million ‘Melania’ Movie Is A Corrupt, Fascistic Cinema Fest”Top Admin Officials—and Trump Himself—Are Clinging Hard To Insane Conspiracy Theories
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
In some ways, we’re still living in the world that emerged in the month or so that led up to January 6.
Continue reading “Top Admin Officials—and Trump Himself—Are Clinging Hard To Insane Conspiracy Theories”Senate Vote on Government Funding Back on Track After Graham Gets Promise of Floor Votes
The Senate Thursday evening struck a deal with the White House to fund the federal government. The plan, which came together after negotiations between the Trump White House and Senate Democrats, includes a two-week continuing resolution for the DHS funding bill alongside the passage of the remaining five full-year appropriations bills. The House is expected to vote on the package on Monday; House Republican leadership is reportedly maneuvering to get it passed over various right-wing objections.
That means that, after a weekend shutdown, Democrats will have two weeks to attempt to recruit Republicans to their wish list of ICE reforms. If Republicans fail to get on board, funding for DHS will expire, causing that department, but no others, to shut down. It would not halt ICE or CBP operations — both agencies have a considerable pool of money awarded by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act that they can tap — but it would start to drain those resources.
Put another way, Democrats go into next week with a considerable amount of leverage.
2020’s Most Insane Conspiracy Theory, ItalyGate, Returns
President Trump is bringing back the most bizarre conspiracy theory for why he lost the 2020 election. It’s ItalyGate, which pins his loss to Joe Biden that year on an elaborate conspiracy in which Barack Obama and China teamed up to use Italian military satellites to zap the election away from him.
Continue reading “2020’s Most Insane Conspiracy Theory, ItalyGate, Returns”Reality Distortion in the Age of Trump and the Corrupt Court
With a hearing on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship now on the calendar, I want to return to a basic point we’ve discussed several times over the last year. Given our experience living mostly in “normal” times, many of us are used to the idea that the law evolves over time. When judges create new case law, the law evolves and changes. And we accept that it has “changed” — in a certain meaning of the word — even when we may not agree with the change. But with so many other things that have changed slowly since 2016 and then rapidly from early 2025, these are outdated ideas, outdated understandings of how the world and the law works.
Birthright citizenship is a key example of this.
Birthright citizenship is clearly, explicitly and incontestably written into the U.S. Constitution. It’s the country’s fundamental law and more than 150 years of American history have been lived on that basis. There’s a reason why no one has doubted this over all those years even if many have opposed it.
Continue reading “Reality Distortion in the Age of Trump and the Corrupt Court”As Congress Begins to Grapple With Restrictions on ICE, States Take Matters Into Their Own Hands
On Thursday, a Michigan State Senate committee held a hearing on a package of bills that restrict federal immigration enforcement in the state, legislation that comes amid a nationwide outcry over immigration enforcement operations that have grown increasingly deadly. The three bills would make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to wear masks, except in certain health-related circumstances; limit government agencies from sharing information with ICE; and outlaw immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” like schools, places of worship, hospitals, women’s shelters, and courthouses.
Continue reading “As Congress Begins to Grapple With Restrictions on ICE, States Take Matters Into Their Own Hands”