Latest news with #DOGE-ification
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump neutered Justice Department watchdogs that were there to prevent politically motivated prosecutions
Donald Trump's DOGE-ification of the federal government added a key team at the Department of Justice to its list of victims in a pair of moves that greased the wheels for his adminsitration to use the agency to go after Democratic members of Congress. The Justice Department's public integrity section (PIN) underwent a series of key changes this year at the direction of Trump-appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has overseen the agency as it charged a Democratic member of Congress, Monica McIver, with assault after she was repeatedly confronted by ICE agents during a legally permitted congressional oversight visit to a detention facility in Newark. McIver's charging is one of several instances where the Trump-led Department of Justice has brazenly defied the tradition of independence from the White House that agency officials typically follow. Under Bondi's leadership, the agency has quickly transitioned into an arm of the White House, focused on the president's priorities and willing to target his political enemies. Other targets of that trend have been a Milwaukee judge, arrested and charged with allegedly preventing immigration authorities from arresting a man outside of her courtroom by leading him out a back entrance after his hearing concluded, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to a hellish prison in El Salvador in violation of a court ruling. Abrego Garcia was charged with trafficking migrants last week after the federal government relented in a weeks-long battle with the courts and returned him to the United States. A federal prosecutor in Tennessee, Ben Schrader, resigned over his concerns that the charges were filed for political reasons, according to ABC News. McIver's charging shortly followed the agency-wide suspension of a rule which previously required prosecutors to obtain approval from the PIN before members of Congress could be criminally charged — a safeguard previously in place to prevent targeting of the administration's political opponents on spurious charges, Reuters reported. McIver was charged with assault after being involved in a scuffle with ICE agents outside of a Newark detention facility; video shows her making physical contact with an agent, but possibly by accident. The agency has not released an explanation for why agents engaged in a scuffle with McIver at the scene at all, given that the agency is, by law, prohibited from using its funding in any way to prevent members of Congress from conducting oversight visits. Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, was arrested at the scene. The Independent reached out for comment regarding the suspension of the rule regarding criminal cases which involve members of Congress, and to inquire about any other reductions to the PIN division's responsibilities. As part of staff reductions across the whole of the federal government, the PIN team was also hit. The decision of federal prosecutors to drop an investigation into New York's Democratic mayor sparked a wave of resignations at the division, with departing attorneys having been asked to give the order to end the probe after federal prosecutors in New York refused. What followed was a gutting of the PIN section, which is now a fraction of its former size, according to multiple reports, and no longer handling cases directly. Just five prosecutors were directly assigned to the division by mid-March, down from 30. The suspension of the rule in May and the other reported erosions of PIN's authority marks a serious reduction in a key safeguard that the agency implemented in 1976 after the Watergate scandal. At the time, another Republican president leaned on the Justice Department to influence an investigation into a break-in at the Democratic Party's headquarters and the extent of the Oval Office's knowledge of the plot. Donald Trump, in an executive order, directed Bondi to review all DOJ teams with 'civil or criminal enforcement authority ' and identify whether individual divisions were, by Trump's standards, used for political purposes by the Biden administration. Biden officials have denied any weaponization of the DOJ, with prosecutions of the president's son Hunter and a Democratic senator from New Jersey as evidence to point to. The stated purpose of that executive action was to end the 'weaponization' of the Justice Department and other agencies. But over the course of six months, the DOJ's greatest tool for preventing that possibility has all but vanished. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, wrote to Bondi in March about the dismantling of the PIN division, but his office has not released a statement on the matter since. The DoJ issued no public statement in response. 'Certain political appointees in this Department of Justice have already proven they put President Trump's political interests over their duties as prosecutors and as lawyers. Multiple Public Integrity Section attorneys resigned rather than endorse then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove's unethical quid pro quo in dropping the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams,' wrote the senator. He added: 'If the Trump administration's goal was to encourage corruption and abuse of office, it is hard to know what it would do differently.'
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bernie Sanders torches Senate Democrat Elissa Slotkin: Americans aren't ‘dumb' and know what ‘oligarchy' means
Bernie Sanders fired back at criticism for using the word 'oligarchy' as he defended his approach to rallying voters and the Democratic base to respond to the DOGE-ification of the federal government. His remarks on Sunday came after Michigan's newly elected Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin told Politico that she thinks her party should stop using the term. 'The American people are not as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are,' an unusually pointed Sanders told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. 'I think they understand very well, when the top 1 per cent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy.' Slotkin, who spoke with Politico last week, urged her fellow party members to stop using the term 'oligarch' — a word she herself has used to describe Russian billionaire allies of Vladimir Putin on X. The independent senator from Vermont told NBC's Kristen Welker that the tens of thousands of Americans coming out to his rallies across the United States are proof that Slotkin is out of step with Americans across the country. 'We had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado. We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California,' Sanders said. 'These are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about. Are you living in a democracy when [Elon Musk] can spend $270 million to elect Trump and then becomes the most important person in government?' he added. 'Or where AIPAC and other super PACs have enormous power over Democratic candidates?' Joining Sanders on his appropriately-named 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the party's youngest stars in Congress and a favorite to seek higher office in the coming cycles. The two have turned out crowds larger than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they rally angry Democrats and independents in response to the rapid, sweeping changes to the federal government under Trump's second presidency. Another Democrat taking the party's message directly to voters at a time when the national Democratic brand is badly tarnished is Conor Lamb, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, who continues to make appearances at town hall-style events across his home state, including in Republican districts. Lamb, who lost a Senate primary to incumbent Senator John Fetterman after progressives broke in Fetterman's favor, mended fences with Ocasio-Cortez in a social media thread that also revealed where he fell on the use of the term 'oligarch.' He, like Ocasio-Cortez, is widely believed to have ambitions of further political service. '[C]learly we have been on the same side of the oligarchy question (against) and protecting social security and Medicare (for),' Lamb wrote to Ocasio-Cortez on X last month. '[L]ets make that team as big as possible. Good luck on the road.' Sanders, like many progressives, faulted Democrats for abandoning key parts of the party's electoral base — working class voters and minorities — after the 2024 election ended disastrously for Harris, who lost every major battleground state to Trump and won millions fewer votes than her old running mate, Joe Biden, did four years prior. During the campaign, Harris eschewed public support for policy items supported by many on the left, including raising the minimum wage or ending U.S. military support for the Israeli siege of Gaza, and instead campaigned with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and vowed that her presidency would be a continuation of Biden's first term. Sanders was an avid supporter of many provisions in Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda, which died in Congress after the party suffered defections from two centrist Democrats who later gave up their seats rather than face reelection challenges.
The Independent
27-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Bernie Sanders torches Senate Democrat Elissa Slotkin: Americans aren't ‘dumb' and know what ‘oligarchy' means
Bernie Sanders fired back at criticism for using the word 'oligarchy' as he defended his approach to rallying voters and the Democratic base to respond to the DOGE-ification of the federal government. His remarks on Sunday came after Michigan's newly elected Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin told Politico that she thinks her party should stop using the term. 'The American people are not as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are,' an unusually pointed Sanders told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. 'I think they understand very well, when the top 1 per cent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy.' Slotkin, who spoke with Politico last week, urged her fellow party members to stop using the term 'oligarch' — a word she herself has used to describe Russian billionaire allies of Vladimir Putin on X. The independent senator from Vermont told NBC's Kristen Welker that the tens of thousands of Americans coming out to his rallies across the United States are proof that Slotkin is out of step with Americans across the country. 'We had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado. We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California,' Sanders said. 'These are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about. Are you living in a democracy when [Elon Musk] can spend $270 million to elect Trump and then becomes the most important person in government?' he added. 'Or where AIPAC and other super PACs have enormous power over Democratic candidates?' Joining Sanders on his appropriately-named 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the party's youngest stars in Congress and a favorite to seek higher office in the coming cycles. The two have turned out crowds larger than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they rally angry Democrats and independents in response to the rapid, sweeping changes to the federal government under Trump's second presidency. Another Democrat taking the party's message directly to voters at a time when the national Democratic brand is badly tarnished is Conor Lamb, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, who continues to make appearances at town hall-style events across his home state, including in Republican districts. Lamb, who lost a Senate primary to incumbent Senator John Fetterman after progressives broke in Fetterman's favor, mended fences with Ocasio-Cortez in a social media thread that also revealed where he fell on the use of the term 'oligarch.' He, like Ocasio-Cortez, is widely believed to have ambitions of further political service. '[C]learly we have been on the same side of the oligarchy question (against) and protecting social security and Medicare (for),' Lamb wrote to Ocasio-Cortez on X last month. '[L]ets make that team as big as possible. Good luck on the road.' Sanders, like many progressives, faulted Democrats for abandoning key parts of the party's electoral base — working class voters and minorities — after the 2024 election ended disastrously for Harris, who lost every major battleground state to Trump and won millions fewer votes than her old running mate, Joe Biden, did four years prior. During the campaign, Harris eschewed public support for policy items supported by many on the left, including raising the minimum wage or ending U.S. military support for the Israeli siege of Gaza, and instead campaigned with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and vowed that her presidency would be a continuation of Biden's first term. Sanders was an avid supporter of many provisions in Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda, which died in Congress after the party suffered defections from two centrist Democrats who later gave up their seats rather than face reelection challenges.
