We continue our coverage of the fallout from the dropped federal case against the “Broadview 6,” six people who attended a protest outside Chicago’s Broadview ICE jail in September. They were later indicted for conspiracy to impede a federal agent, despite many not having met prior to appearing together in court. “I didn’t find out that I had been indicted until a month after this happened,” says Kat Abughazaleh, who was not arrested at the protest, but weeks later, as she was running for Congress. Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic ward committeeperson in Chicago, says that when he received a text informing him about a warrant for his arrest, “I actually thought it was a scam. I honestly didn’t think it was real.”
The United States may resume funding for a global humanitarian vaccine alliance, reversing a decision by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to hold up the money because of vaccine concerns, Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated Tuesday. Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the State Department was wresting back control…
Donald Trump wants to give it a little more control. Bernie Sanders wants to give it a lot.
Lithuania is considering hosting US nuclear weapons on its territory, defense minister said, as the talks with Washington about boosting deterrence against Russian are ongoing.
When Special Counsel Robert Hur interviewed Joe Biden in October 2023 about retaining classified documents in his Delaware home, Hur famously declined to indict a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. After reading Jill Biden's memoir
According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, the Iran war “debacle” has “clearly broken” President Donald Trump, and as a result, the commander-in-chief has “given up governing” to focus exclusively on his true priorities: “rage and revenge.”The latest evidence of this is tthat Trump has tapped Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a role that is vital to the country’s national security apparatus. As Krugamn writes, “The word ‘acting’ is crucial. The statute creating the position of DNI explicitly requires that the appointee ‘shall have extensive national security expertise.’” Pulte has none. A home building baron and current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he has zero background in intelligence. “But pointing out that Pulte is unqualified for his new job doesn’t convey the extent to which Trump is trolling America with this new appointment,” says Krugman. “For Pulte isn’t merely unqualified for a sensitive national security position. He’s unqualified, intellectually and morally, for any government position. All he has are the qualifications that matter to Trump: he is a shameless lackey and willing hitman for Trump’s vendettas.”Part of what brought Pulte into Trump’s orbit where the “thousands of nasty political posts” he spewed onto social media in recent years. His family’s background in residential construction garnered him an appointment as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but according to Krugman, “His real job has been weaponizing the agency as a tool against Trump’s perceived enemies — weaponization that is being investigated by the Government Accountability Office as a potential misuse of authority. Pulte confected false claims of mortgage fraud to try to push out Lisa Cook, the only black woman on the Federal Reserve Board. He has leveled similar trumped-up charges against Letitia James, New York’s Attorney General, and several Democratic politicians. And he pushed groundless fraud accusations against Jerome Powell, the former Federal Reserve chair, who stood in the way of Trump’s attempt to politicize monetary policy.”That Pulte has turned out to be a “bumbling hatchet man” whose efforts have been entirely ineffective is besides the point, says Krugman. “For Trump, willingness to engage in unethical behavior is all that matters.”Even so, Krugman expresses surprise that Trump would select someone with such vanishing experience considering the fact that, at the very least, the president “sees wars only as ways to enrich himself and distract from his domestic woes,” and to that end, one would think he’d want accurate intelligence. “But Trump appears to have given up on governing,” asserts Krugman, “even governing aimed at consolidating his own power and legacy. He wants to punish everyone he imagines has wronged him but has lost all interest in making the government work, even for nefarious purposes. So he don’t need no intelligence, just someone who will indulge his rage. And that will be Pulte’s job.”While Krugman warns that the Republican Party and its megadonors are still working hard to corrupt American democracy, dismantle the country’s scientific community, and consolidate power for billionaires, he concludes that “Trump himself is, at this point, little more than a festering ball of anger and hate.”
After widespread bipartisan outcry, the Justice Department says it is permanently abandoning plans for a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Widely branded as a “slush fund,” it was expected to reward President Donald Trump’s supporters, including those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The fund was announced in May as part of a settlement in Trump’s personal lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax data. That case was recently reopened, after dozens of former federal judges filed a motion alleging that Trump’s actions were “collusive.” As Nancy Gertner, one of the judges who joined the motion, explains, “What happened in this case was, essentially, Trump was suing himself. There was no question that Trump was on both sides of the 'v.'” Gertner and her fellow judges are represented by attorney Matt Platkin, who says, “It is illegal for the president to ask for any IRS audit to be opened or closed. That is a federal crime.”
The Justice Department's No. 3 official briefly admitted on X that the agency was moving to revive a controversial fund to compensate Jan. 6 defendants — then deleted the post on Wednesday.Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Jr. responded to a post from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) with a terse three-word reply — "We're on it." — before quietly scrubbing it. Politico's Josh Gerstein flagged the deletion.The admission came just hours after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies that the DOJ's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" was finished — permanently. "Look, we're not moving forward with the fund. Period," Blanche told the panel. Asked by Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) if that meant never, Blanche said: "Correct."Graham had proposed threading the needle on the dead fund. While acknowledging Blanche's announcement, he argued that "there are many victims of the weaponized Biden Justice Department" and proposed routing claims through the existing Federal Tort Claims Act process instead of creating a new system.Critics in both parties had hammered the fund as a "slush fund" — a nearly $1.8 billion pot of taxpayer money with no judicial review, no congressional oversight, and commissioners the president could fire at will. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia had already temporarily blocked it.Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, called it a "racket" designed to funnel taxpayer dollars to "insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists." Even roughly half of Senate Republicans were unhappy with the fund, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).Woodward's deleted post raises fresh questions about whether the administration intends to pursue Graham's workaround — and whether Blanche's "period" means what he said it did.
Republican Spencer Pratt, known for his TV role on The Hills, appears to be in a tight race with two Democrats in Los Angeles.