The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday temporarily halted criminal proceedings against Attorney General Liz Murrill, just one day after a New Orleans grand jury returned a politically motivated 16-count felony indictment accusing the Republican attorney general of intimidation and malfeasance.
The post UPDATE: Louisiana Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Politically Motivated Indictment Against AG Liz Murrill appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) board of directors voted to affirm the organization's definition of a journalist to make clear that terrorists are also journalists worthy of protection.
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People across the country are preparing to celebrate America’s 250th birthday this weekend — a process that has been made more challenging as event organizers scramble to deal with the extreme heat. President Trump is headed to South Dakota late on Friday, where he’s expected to make remarks at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and…
As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao. “The concept of artificial general intelligence is not one that’s scientifically grounded.”
The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only President Donald Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by Lutnick’s two sons.As The New York Times pointed out in its investigation of the scheme, “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”The phrases “self-enrichment” and “few precedents” are interesting ways of characterizing this latest instance of the administration’s corruption. Isn’t self-enrichment a good thing, in the sense of profiting from your own hard work? By contrast, the article doesn’t mention the word “corruption” at all. Perhaps the Times is worried about getting hit by yet another Trump legal challenge (in October last year, Trump refiled a $15 billion defamation suit against the paper for its coverage of his 2024 presidential campaign).There are indeed several precedents in American history for what Trump is doing. These previous corruption scandals—Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome—wrecked the reputations of presidents and cast long shadows over American politics. They also helped to produce the kind of safeguards that Trump is now destroying.Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States. As with much of Trump’s disrespect for norms, his corruption has been massive and largely in full view. The two outstanding questions are: Will Trump and company ever be held accountable for their graft and will this corruption have an enduring impact on political institutions in the United States?Tracking the DamageIf scandalous behavior unfolds in full view of everyone, is it still a scandal? “Scandal” suggests something hidden, something whispered about, something revealed. Trump’s actions are full frontal. They are both brazen and matter-of-fact.According to the Trump administration and its extended family, the money skimmed off the top of economic transactions is just smart politics. The administration has endeavored to negotiate every peace deal, trade agreement, investment arrangement, and mineral pact in such a way as to deliver Trump, his family, and their circle of close supporters a good chunk of change.This is Trump’s interpretation of the American dream: Folks would be downright foolish not to profit from their position. All the great tycoons made their money, from railroads to AI, by being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of ruthlessness. In Trump’s case, however, he is using taxpayer money to cover the risk. And most the time, given the terms of the arrangement, there is hardly any risk because Trump is using his presidential power to game the system. That’s what he really means by the “art of the deal.” Trump only deals from a marked deck of cards.The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025.The graft is not secret, though sometimes the actual amounts involved are obscured by layers of complex finance. Trump’s recent mandatory financial disclosure offers some details. But thanks to a number of websites, it’s become quite easy to track in real time the growing amount of Trump’s slice of the pie.The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025. Much of this money has come from various crypto schemes, including the Trump meme coin, but also such dubious ventures as the documentary about Melania Trump and a number of legal settlements (more colloquially known as shakedowns). Corruption Counter puts the value at $2.2 billion and includes such recent items as the $100 million savings for Trump from the recent effort to bar the Internal Revenue Service from auditing the president. (Courts blocked the overall $1.8 billion “settlement fund,” but the Justice Department is upholding the IRS amnesty.)If you want to keep track just of the crypto deals, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee maintain the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) keeps his own list, which highlights the insider trading around the Iran War and a defense contract with Dell after the president invested in the company. David Kirkpatrick, at The New Yorker, has been keeping a running total of Trump’s ballooning assets. In January, he updated his total to $4 billion, which details, among other things, the Gulf money flowing into Trump pockets.
July 4th events for America's milestone birthday are being threatened by a brutal heat wave. And, Russia has struck Ukraine's capital, killing several people in what it calls retaliatory attacks.
