Latest news with #Lawfare
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court Abets Trump's Defiance of Court Orders
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. As Josh Kovensky reported yesterday, the Supreme Court's order pausing a preliminary injunction against Trump's policy of third-country removals without due process will undoubtedly fire up his brutal deportation machine, and embolden administration officials to continue to flout court orders restraining it. The case, Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., involves a challenge to the Trump administration policy directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up noncitizens the government previously was unable to deport to their home country, and then remove them to a third country without warning, due process, or consideration of the conditions they might face there. The preliminary injunction in the case, which the administration evaded and defied on several occasions, required the government to provide plaintiffs with notice and time to challenge their removal. Shockingly, the Supreme Court stayed that injunction pending final resolution of the case, offering the administration carte blanche to continue third-country removals in the meantime. Worse, it gave the administration a very big cookie by pausing a court order that the administration already had defied. Lawfare's Quinta Jurecic has a detailed, maddening account of each step of the government's 'legalistic noncompliance' with court orders in this and similar immigration cases, which involves 'delaying implementation of court orders, adopting hyper-technical interpretations of judicial rulings in order to engineer loopholes, and asserting ignorance and confusion whenever something goes wrong.' D.V.D., she notes, 'stands out as a chronicle of noncompliance from the very beginning—a cascade of sloppiness and calculated misunderstandings on the government's part that has resulted in potentially serious danger for a gay Guatemalan man removed from the United States, along with the continued detention of eight men at a U.S. military base in Djibouti.' The ruling is 'disastrous,' according to legal scholar Steve Vladek. 'For the Court to not only grant emergency relief in this case, but to offer nary a word of explanation either in criticism of the government's behavior, or in defense of why it granted relief notwithstanding that behavior, is to invite—if not affirmatively enable—comparable defiance of future district court orders by the government.' After the Trump administration attempted to fire remaining Voice of America (VOA) staffers en masse on Friday, the judge in the pending case challenging the evisceration of the agency, Royce Lamberth, ordered the parties to appear in court yesterday. Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and VOA's parent agency, in April, finding 'defendants are likely in violation of numerous federal laws' in their quest to slash the news service, mostly by terminating virtually all of its journalists. When Lamberth asked the government's counsel, Brenda Gonzalez Horowitz, why he had not been notified of Friday's layoff letters, she protested that they had been complying 'in good faith' with his April order. 'I don't think so,' was his reply, before ordering the government to file an update on how it is complying with the injunction by Friday. To commemorate today's anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, the Christian right is pressing the Trump administration to restrict use of the abortion pill mifepristone. As part of a 'day of fasting and prayer for life' hosted by the Family Research Council, the organization urges followers to 'Pray for the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] to revoke the dangerous policy of the Biden administration regarding mifepristone and chemical abortion regulations, and to reinstate safety standards that prioritize the health and safety of mothers and their unborn children.' Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has asked the FDA to review mifepristone's safety, following the unscientific claims of Christian right organizations opposed to abortion. Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, giving her space to expound on her ongoing commitment to barring foreign students from Harvard. Her opening paragraph baselessly charged that 'school leadership has not complied with the Department of Homeland Security's lawful oversight duties, has fostered antisemitic extremism and used taxpayer money to collaborate with an American adversary.' Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, co-author of 'How Democracies Die,' called the piece 'extraordinarily authoritarian' and a 'whiff of fascism.' Noem's concluding sentence proves Levitsky's point. 'Harvard must decide whether it wishes to be a partner to the United States,' Noem wrote, 'or an adversary to American values.' Last night, a federal judge in Boston, Allison Burroughs, blocked Trump administration efforts to bar foreign students from Harvard for the second time in a week. Tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold confirmation hearings on Trump's nomination of his former personal attorney, Emil Bove, to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. As Trump's acting Deputy Attorney General, Bove was notoriously at the center of the corrupt withdrawal of the federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Justice Connection, a group of Department of Justice alumni, has also released a scathing video explaining why Bove is wildly unqualified for the bench. An account by a DOJ attorney fired by the Trump administration, Erez Reuveni, provides even more damning details. According to Reuveni's account, Bove openly pressed for the government to violate court orders in immigration cases. 'Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you' and ignore any such order,' Reuveni revealed in a document submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the DOJ Inspector General yesterday, the New York Times reports. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board questions Bove's fitness for a lifetime appointment, writing that 'his reputation lately is as a smashmouth partisan who wields the law as a weapon.' Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has tallied just some of the cost of the assault on our federal government by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It found DOGE cuts to medical research 'could amount to an estimated $10 billion loss in economic activity, and a loss of approximately 44,000 jobs a year;' that U.S.-based organizations contracting with the U.S. Agency for International Development lost $28.9 billion in funding; and that $500 billion will be lost to the Internal Revenue Service owing to DOGE's elimination of staff and programs there. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg, and do not include DOGE's assaults on other agencies. Nor can we compute other kinds of losses, including America's international soft power, the public's trust in government, and countless non-monetary societal benefits accruing from a functional government staffed by nonpartisan experts in their fields. The New Yorker's Charles Bethea offers a look at Joe Gebbia, thought to be a possible successor to Elon Musk as head of DOGE. Bethea's doozy of a lede contains most of what you probably need to know: Who will help lead the Department of Government Efficiency now that Elon Musk has left the scene? News reports have mentioned Joe Gebbia, a Tesla board member and a co-founder of Airbnb, as a possible replacement. Gebbia is forty-three. Like Musk—his close friend—he is a billionaire, a resident of Austin, Texas, and the rumored recipient of a hair transplant. Gebbia formally announced his political conversion on X in January, posting that, after years of supporting Democrats, he finally 'did [his] own research' and concluded that Donald Trump 'deeply cares about our nation.' His feed has a MAHA flavor: Big Food exposés ('The truth about Ketchup') alternate with digs at liberals suffering from 'TDS,' or Trump Derangement Syndrome. With or without Gebbia at the helm, DOGE continues to be a danger to democracy, health and safety, privacy, the civil service system, checks and balances–you know, everything. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has never met a Trump action he didn't like, brushed off questions from reporters about whether he would bring a bipartisan resolution, co-sponsored by California Democrat Ro Khanna and Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, to require Trump to seek Congressional approval for further military intervention in Iran. (Trump purported to expel Massie from the MAGA movement over his co-sponsorship of the measure, calling him a 'pathetic LOSER.') 'It's all politics,' Johnson said, his characteristic diversionary tactic. 'This is not a time for politics.' Or, apparently, as ever, congressional oversight. Media critic Mark Jacob offers eight suggestions for the media to avoid turning war with Iran into the sort of entertainment loop Trump craves. Mother Jones reporter Anna Merlan digs into all the bogus investigations FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino have promised, but never delivered on. The piece is filled with eye-rolling details of all the ridiculous conspiracies that Trumpland chases, hoping to feed the base's voracious appetite for new diabolical content about their perceived enemies, from Joe Biden to James Comey to the Chinese Communist Party. But for Patel and Bongino, who have their positions precisely because of their proximity to that world, there's a serious catch: Today, with the conspiracy world full of ever more competing storylines, theories, and hoped-for outcomes, the idea of disclosure remains a singular focal point of longing; that someone high up, somewhere, will finally tell us what we are desperate to know. Against that backdrop, Bongino, Patel, and other Trump figures are still awkwardly trying to transition from demanding to know the truth to being the people in a position to provide it. In the meantime, Bongino and other Trump figures are continuing to create content by churning out endless tweets, sending performatively verbose press releases, and making appearances on partisan news channels, all aimed at heightening their own profile and shifting blame from anything they have not yet achieved. Where before they cast themselves as independent investigators calling on a shadowy government to reveal its secrets, now they're forced to play new roles, as dedicated and diligent public servants. This is, of course, boring: 'I gave up everything for this,' Bongino lamented recently on Fox & Friends. Of course, as with all things Trump, the absurdity is part of the point. And, as always, that does not at all diminish how radically dangerous it is for this to be the conduct of the director of the FBI.
Atlantic
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Atlantic Announces Staff Writers Quinta Jurecic, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Nancy Youssef
As The Atlantic continues a major expansion of its editorial staff, today editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg is announcing the hires of Quinta Jurecic, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Nancy Youssef as staff writers. Nancy is joining from The Wall Street Journal where she was a national security correspondent; Toluse joins from The Washington Post, where he was a national political reporter and previously served as White House bureau chief; and Quinta has been a contributing writer for The Atlantic and senior editor at Lawfare. Below is the staff announcement about Nancy, Toluse, and Quinta: Dear everyone, I'm writing to share the news that three excellent journalists are joining our team as staff writers: Quinta Jurecic, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Nancy Youssef. The Atlantic continues to be the premier destination for the most talented journalists in America, and the addition of these three extraordinarily talented writers simply underscores this point. First, Quinta: Quinta's byline is actually a familiar one to you and to our readers; as a contributing writer here for the past several years, she's produced some of the most incisive coverage of the Trump years of anyone in journalism. Quinta was one of the people I looked to in the early days of the first Trump term to try to make sense of it all, and she delivered, time and time again. (Her Atlantic archive is a rich source of analysis and wisdom for those seeking to understand our political moment.) Quinta is sharp, quick, and extremely adept at translating difficult concepts of law and governance into illuminating stories for the general reader. She is currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a senior editor at Lawfare, for which she previously served as managing editor. Quinta will be joining us at the Wharf. Next, Tolu, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter known for his thoughtfulness, brilliant writing, and years of experience covering politics at the highest level. He is equally at home questioning presidents in the Oval Office as he is documenting the impact of their decision-making on the people they ostensibly serve. He joins us from The Washington Post, where he has been a national political reporter and the paper's White House bureau chief. Before joining the Post, Tolu did stints at Bloomberg News and The Miami Herald. Tolu is the co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. Tolu will be based at the Wharf. And now, Nancy: Nancy is a fearless and experienced reporter with a great knowledge of the Middle East. She was based in Baghdad during the Iraq War and later in Cairo, where she covered the broader Muslim world. Her reporting from Iraq focused on the everyday experience of Iraqis and how the U.S.'s military presence reshaped the country's social and political dynamics. Nancy comes to us from The Wall Street Journal, where she developed a reputation both as a scoop artist and as a tenacious leader among Pentagon and national security reporters. Before joining the Journal, she was a reporter at Buzzfeed News, the Daily Beast, McClatchy Newspapers, the Detroit Free Press, and the Baltimore Sun. Nancy will also be based at the Wharf. Please join me in welcoming them to The Atlantic. Best wishes, Jeff
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Border Czar Squirms When Confronted With Trump Clip About Deploying Troops
Border czar Tom Homan struggled to explain a 2020 clip of President Donald Trump saying it wouldn't be legal for the president to call in the National Guard without a request from a governor. In response to demonstrations against federal immigration raids that began in Los Angeles on Friday, the president has taken the extraordinary steps of unilaterally deploying 4,000 federalized California State National Guard troops and sending hundreds of U.S. Marines to the city. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has accused the president of intentionally 'sowing chaos' in the city and sued to end the National Guard deployment, which he says was illegal. During an interview with Homan, Trump's hard-line border czar, CNN's Kaitlan Collins pointed out there was a time when Trump apparently agreed with Newsom's assessment. She played a clip for Homan in which Trump, asked about Black Lives Matter protests in Oregon, says, 'We have laws. We have to go by the laws. We can't move in the National Guard. I can call 'insurrection' but there's no reason to ever do that, even in a Portland case. We can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a governor.' Then she asked Homan, 'The law of course has not changed since then, so what has?' 'Look I'm not an attorney and all I know is I'm on calls every day with the heads of DOD and DOJ,' he said, using the acronyms for the Department of Defense and Department of Justice. 'So, we've got legal minds in DOJ and DOD [who] are making these decisions, so I certainly think the president is acting within the confines of the law.' Collins, however, pushed back, saying that Homan clearly knew the law well since he had also worked on deportations during Trump's first term. 'I know immigration law very well, but I'm not an expert on constitutional law, or insurrection law,' he said. 'That's out of my lane.' It is generally illegal for the U.S. military to conduct domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act, a compilation of statutes that allows the U.S. president to use the military to quash an armed rebellion or other insurrection, according to Lawfare. As of Monday, Trump had not invoked the act, but he did issue a sweeping memorandum claiming to have the power to deploy National Guard troops at locations where protests against ICE functions are occurring or are likely to occur, The Hill reported. Until last week, a president hadn't federalized a state National Guard—which means the troops report to the U.S. Army—since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Alabama State National Guard troops to protect civil rights advocates marching from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. Even then, the troops were called in to protect the protesters, not the police. During a press conference on Sunday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said the demonstrations in his city had turned violent over the weekend, with rioters setting off fireworks at officers and throwing pieces of concrete at police. Video shows the police using tear gas, flash-bangs and non-lethal bullets to disperse crowds downtown. According to McDonnell, though, the National Guard was called in prematurely. Normally, the police would have first made a mutual aid request to neighboring law enforcement agencies if they needed help ensuring public safety. McDonnell also cautioned that the people committing violence at night were not the same people who had peacefully protested the ICE raids during the day. The protests have followed a usual pattern of civil unrest where subsequent days are more violent because the legitimate protests attract rioters who 'go from one civil unrest situation to another using the same or similar tactics,' he explained. Many Angelenos were also quick to point out that the clashes were mostly restricted to fairly small geographic area in downtown Los Angeles, where several federal buildings are clustered but where very few of the city's 4 million residents actually live. Speaking to Homan, Collins said many people were likely wondering if this was really the worst protest that has happened since the 1960s, warranting federal intervention. Homan first tried to accuse the state's Democratic leadership of not taking action, but just minutes later he acknowledged that on Sunday night LAPD 'did a pretty good job out there, you know, trying to quell some of this violence down.' 'Based on you saying the LAPD is doing their job last night, do you think that Marines would be necessary?' Collins asked. 'Last night was pretty out-of-control,' Homan replied. 'And LAPD was out there in force. But we've got to remember... This is getting to be a significant public safety issue here. So President Trump's thinking ahead of the game.'
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Outrage erupts after Trump's Chrisley pardon as critics condemn what it says about president's regard for the law
President Donald Trump is facing fierce criticism after he decided to pardon reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley. The Chrisleys, best known for their Chrisley Knows Best TV show, were serving prison sentences for fraud and tax evasion. They were convicted in 2022 and sentenced to 12 years (Todd) and seven years (Julie). The White House confirmed the couple's full pardons on Tuesday. Speaking to their children during a phone call from the Oval Office Tuesday, Trump said: 'Your parents are going to be free and clean and I hope we're going to do it by tomorrow.' 'They were given pretty harsh treatment based on what I'm hearing,' he added. The move prompted widespread criticism. 'Trump just pardoned TV personalities Todd and Julie Chrisley, who conspired to defraud Atlanta-area banks out of $30 million in fraudulent loans. In Trump's America, crimes are celebrated and prison sentences are cut short,' said Harry Sisson, a Democratic influencer, on X, calling it 'actual insanity.' In another post, Sisson noted that the pardons for the Chrisleys come as Trump also pardoned 'a corrupt Virginia sheriff who took over $75,000 in bribes' (Trump called him a 'wonderful person'), and a 'man convicted of serious tax crimes, whose mom donated $1 million to Trump and worked on his campaigns.' Sisson called it 'blatant corruption.' 'Oh, Trump's going to pardon the Chrisleys? I'm stunned,' sarcastically noted Phillip Bump, a columnist for The Washington Post, on BlueSky. Anna Bower, a reporter for Lawfare, wrote on BlueSky that the Chrisleys were 'indicted by a federal grand jury in 2019, during the first Trump administration.' 'The Trump-nominated U.S. attorney was Byung Jin "BJay" Pak. He was forced to resign in early 2021 after Trump became convinced he wasn't doing enough to investigate purported election fraud in GA,' she added. 'Their [the Chrisleys'] daughter, Savannah, campaigned for Trump. During a speech at the RNC in 2024, she said her parents were 'persecuted' for their political beliefs,' Bower noted. 'I shudder to think about what Savannah Chrisley had to do to secure those pardons for her parents,' lawyer Amee Vanderpool said on X. "For context: The Chrisleys are well-known Trump supporters," Ally Sammarco, a Democratic strategist, told her followers on X. Singer-songwriter Ricky Davila added: 'The orange felon pardoned corrupt Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins who was convicted of bribery and fraud, now he pardoned Todd and Julie Chrisley who defrauded banks. Because nothing says law and order like a felon gifting pardons to other felons for their loyalty.'
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Ex NYC Governor Andrew Cuomo under investigation for Covid testimony
The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo over his testimony to Congress during the Covid-19 pandemic, US media reports. Congressional Republicans have accused Cuomo - who is running for New York City mayor - of lying in an investigation surrounding his response to the crisis. It marks the latest in a string of investigations launched by the Trump administration into Democrats or opponents since the president returned to the White spokesperson has said the former governor is not aware of a Justice Department investigation into his actions. House Republicans reportedly requested Cuomo be federally investigated and argued he lie to a congressional committee when he said he was not involved in reviewing a report from the New York Health Department about how the state handled the Covid pandemic while he was governor. In a statement, Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesperson, told the BBC's US partner CBS News that the former governor has not had any contact from law enforcement about the case or received any said news of the investigation was leaked, describing it as "lawfare" and "election interference".The BBC has reached out to the Cuomo and the Justice Department for was frequently criticised for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and often clashed with Trump over his handling of the crisis. The one-time New York governor is attempting a political comeback and is leading polls in the New York City mayoral race. He is running against Eric Adams, who in April had a criminal case against him permanently dismissed by a federal judge after the Trump administration directed prosecutors to drop the corruption move led to the resignation of Manhattan's top federal prosecutor who accused Adams of striking a deal with the Trump administration to dismiss his case in exchange for immigration is one of a handful of Democrats being targeted by Trump. Earlier this week, a Trump-allied prosecutor charged a New Jersey Democratic lawmaker with assault following an alleged incident outside an immigration facility.
