However, the injunction applies only to this year’s elections.
House conservatives' push to force Senate action on the SAVE America Act has stalled the chamber, drawing sharp backlash from fellow Republicans.
President Donald J. Trump tried to quell a mutiny from some GOP lawmakers that has paralyzed the House of Representatives over the SAVE America Act. Frustrations boiled […]
'I am skeptical that the relief that the District Court ordered complies' with existing law, wrote Justice Thomas.
A British content creator is trending on social media after a viral clip shows him meeting President Donald Trump during his visit to the United States. Content […]
Tuesday’s sweep of the New York City primaries by Marxist-inspired Democrats backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, widely seen as a full-fledged communist himself, resulted […]
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to release additional unredacted Jeffrey Epstein records or explain by July 2 why it can't.Why it matters: The ruling could force the DOJ to release previously withheld Epstein records or publicly explain why they remain sealed.Driving the news: U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in D.C. gave the DOJ until July 2 to comply with a preliminary injunction in media legal analyst Katie Phang's lawsuit alleging the department failed to comply with last year's Epstein Act.The department has already released 3.5 million pages under the law, but Phang argues it still improperly withheld or redacted additional material.Phang alleges in her suit against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that the department nevertheless violated the Epstein Act for several reasons.Zoom in: In his opinion granting the preliminary injunction, Sullivan noted that Phang alleges the DOJ redacted the names of senders and recipients in "at least eight email exchanges" with Epstein regarding a "torture video" and alleged sexual activity involving young women, including minors.She accuses Blanche of "redacting the names of co-defendants in a draft indictment, the names of individuals identified as 'co-conspirators.'"Phang also alleges that Blanche withheld 36 materials mentioning President Trump, specifically, "notes from FBI interviews with a victim who has alleged that in the 1980s, when she was about 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump, who in turn assaulted her."State of play: The DOJ said in a filing this month that Phang can't sue because she should have made a Freedom of Information Act request, but the journalist's lawyers argued that she had been denied FOIA requests related to the Epstein files, CBS News reported.Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein allegations and he hasn't been charged with a crime in connection with them.Representatives of the DOJ did not immediately respond to Axios' Thursday evening request for comment.
President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night speech to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary was garbage, according to a former U.S. Naval War College professor.“I mean, it was trashy,” Tom Nichols, retired professor from the U.S. Naval War College, told The Bulwark’ podcaster Tim Miller on Thursday. “The whole business was trashy. And I know that sounds — oh, that's snooty and elitist. But no, it was just trashy. And his speech was small. That's a thing. That's what I wrote about last night. He took this thing that could have been grandiose.”Nichols then quoted George Washington, America’s first president, who in his last will and testament started by describing himself as a citizen first and a president second.“For him, that was the most important thing to be — to be a citizen, and he understood that we were all sharers in this great adventure, this great experiment, and Trump just doesn't understand any of that,” Nichols said. “He made it all about me, me, me.” Quoting Trump’s bragging about ending taxes on tips, declaring war against Iran and renovating the Reflecting Pool, Nichols added that “the few times that Trump tried to be elevated, or tried to be presidential, he said things like — the one that jumped out at me — ‘from the storied alleys of Boston to the streets of Philadelphia.’”“Okay, first of all, anybody who's lived in Boston knows there's no such thing as these storied alleys of Boston,” Nichols said. “They have some stories, and we won't tell them. But "to the streets of Philadelphia" — I'm sorry, wasn't that a Bruce Springsteen song about a movie about a guy with AIDS? I mean, it just went on and on — skyscrapers and railroads and Normandy and Saratoga. But then he would go right back to the really petty, small, you know, ‘look at me, look what I did.’”He concluded, “And I'll finish with one serious comment, which is that it shows that Trump and his people don't understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one's country for itself — for what it is, for its eternal characteristics. Nationalism is ‘my tribe is better than all other tribes.’ And that's the only way Trump can conceive of this. He kept saying we're better than everybody else, we're the hottest, we're the biggest.”Nichols is not the only one to draw attention to a “trashy” quality in Trump’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday. His Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy aroused controversy when he described Trump’s critics and the artists who cancelled appearing at his event as “libtards,” even though his daughter with Downs Syndrome was present. According to CNN senior political reporter Aaron Blake, “In one sentence, Duffy both complains about the musical acts who canceled and completely legitimizes their stated reason for doing so.”More controversially, during a UFC event on the White House lawn intended to commemorate both America’s birthday and Trump’s own birthday, fighter Josh Hokit told pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan that “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”Similarly National Park Service employees have balked at being required to wear Freedom 250 pins under the threat of “professional reprimands,” with one employee telling Mother Jones “when I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes.’ I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”
The following is a transcript of a conversation between election rights lawyer Marc Elias, TNR’s Win McCormack, and Carol Butler. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.Marc Elias: Donald Trump’s going to impose provisions [attacking voting rights] through executive orders. He issued a voting executive order last year that we were successful in striking down, and we will succeed in striking [the next] one down.… The Department of Justice right now is operating like his private law firm and is seeking to obtain confidential voter data from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. Win McCormack: Oh, I thought it had stopped with Georgia and Arizona.Marc Elias: No, no. So those are the ballots that they’re seeking from 2020. They have seized the ballots from Georgia from 2020, and they have [sued to get] the ballots from Arizona from 2020, but the Department of Justice is suing to get access, essentially, to the unredacted voter rolls in all 50 states. And they’re suing 30 of those states, and we have intervened to oppose them in all those states. And so I think that’s one of the big battles to focus on, because if you want to run a voter-turnout program, you need the voter files, but if you also want to run a voter suppression operation at scale, you need the voter files. We’re entering the season in which we will see lots of different state laws by Republican legislatures try to suppress voting rights, and we’re litigating against those. We’re going to see more efforts by the administration, perhaps, to deploy federal paramilitary like [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. And we’ll have to be prepared to litigate against that. It’s just gonna be a knife fight from here to the end.Carol Butler: Can I ask a question on the private voter roll data? I know that a lot of [states’ attorneys general] have been filing lawsuits. Have some A.G.s been beaten in court anywhere on this yet? Have there been any victories on that?Elias: Seventeen states turned them over voluntarily. Thirty states and D.C. have fought [back]. In the 30 states that have fought, we have intervened to defend voters in all 30. We have won alongside the A.G.s in Oregon, California, and … Michigan. There are three states that have dismissed their claims. So we are awaiting decisions in the other statesMcCormack: And is there anything in the law that actually gives [Republicans] the right to have what they want?Elias: No. [Laughter.] They’re claiming their versions of the law that let them have access to this, but this is unprecedented, and there’s a reason why we’re 3 and 0, and soon to be 4 and 0, then 5 and 0, and then 6 and 0. Look, they are trying to bully these states in ways that you see them try to bully states in other arenas. The challenges are that the Department of Justice can literally litigate everywhere. But for every state that opposes this, we also have states like Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi that are voluntarily complying with these requests. And that’s going to be a challenge as we go forward, because we assume—everyone assumes—that where there is voter suppression, we are necessarily fighting against the federal government. But remember, most voter suppression is actually fighting against states where either the state itself or the Republican National Committee or Republicans are doing it.McCormack: So the Republican National Committee can come in and intervene in states?Elias: Well, the RNC runs voter suppression programs to try to prevent people from voting, and they also bring litigation to try to make voting harder. There’s a case [Watson v. Republican National Committee] that was just argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the RNC sued Mississippi to try to make mail-in voting more difficult.McCormack: Well, I heard somebody on MS NOW last night saying that, regardless of what happens with the Save America Act [a suppressive “voter ID” bill that would also give the Trump administration a federal surveillance system of voters], they have a very well-worked-out plan for doing what they want to do. Is that what you were referring to before, or is there more to what they said?Elias: There’s more to it. What we’ve seen from Donald Trump in the past is that he starts with lies, then he increases the rhetoric behind the lies, then you see the legal process, and then when he fails in the legal process, we have violence. We are on that progression. He has lied about voting, he has now upped the rhetoric for all of the SAVE Act, which began as a proof-of-citizenship law. It’s now become a voter suppression, voter purge, ban on mail-in voting, trans-targeting law. So when he loses in court in the cases I referenced, and he’s not able to pass this law through Congress, as we’ve discussed, I think he’s going to escalate further. Ultimately we’ll see some type of violence, I fear.