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Clinton judge BLOCKS Trump's $1.8 billion 'slush fund' for MAGA allies in bombshell decision
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A federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton has blocked Donald Trump from moving forward his plans to create a $1.8 billion taxpayer 'slush fund' to compensate his political allies.
President Donald Trump’s “pursuit of retribution” has led to the ousting of several GOP lawmakers he’d perceived as inefficiently loyal, but in doing so, may very well have doomed his future nominees for the remainder of his term, health care reporter Joseph Choi argued Sunday in an analysis published in The Hill.Earlier this month, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) was defeated in his GOP primary race by his Trump-backed challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA). Cassidy was among the few Republican lawmakers to vote to convict the president for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and would go on to call for Trump to drop out of the 2024 race.And, while Trump may have succeeded in helping oust Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican still maintains his position as chair of the influential Senate Health Committee, a position with the power to derail any of Trump's health agency nominees.“The next few months could determine whether [Cassidy’s] legacy is restraining the Trump administration’s more extreme elements or ultimately ushering them in,” Choi wrote.“In the coming months, Cassidy will play a major role in elevating the next round of federal health leaders, presiding over the nominations of former Deputy Surgeon General Erica Schwartz to be the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nicole Saphier to be next U.S. surgeon general and whomever the administration picks to replace former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary.”Cassidy ended up being the deciding vote in confirming Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he was initially skeptical of but convinced to confirm after receiving assurances that the HHS would adhere to vaccine safety guidelines.Now, with “nothing to lose,” noted Joseph Antos, senior health policy fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, speaking with The Hill, Cassidy could prove a problem for Trump’s health nominees going forward.
Donald Trump may be close to a legal reckoning on the classified documents case, according to a legal expert.Joyce Vance, the former United States attorney who has become one of the most widely read legal analysts of the Trump era, says a key appeals court is signaling it has lost patience with the judge who has spent more than a year blocking the release of the classified documents portion of Jack Smith's special counsel report — and that Trump's strategy of rigging legal proceedings in his favor by eliminating genuine opposition is running out of time."It's starting to look like time is up," Vance wrote in her Civil Discourse Substack on Saturday.At the center of the dispute is Volume II of Smith's report, which covers the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who has consistently ruled in his favor, blocked the report's release on Inauguration Day and refused for months to act on requests by American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute to intervene and argue for its release. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals previously cited "undue delay" from Cannon and ordered her to rule within 60 days. She ruled against the media organizations, and they appealed.Now the Eleventh Circuit has ordered a full briefing schedule, with all briefs due by July. Vance notes the order was signed by Judge Nancy Abudu, a Biden appointee, and says the court's track record of correcting Cannon's errors gives her reason for optimism.Vance connects the classified documents fight to the IRS slush fund case, arguing both share the same fatal flaw: Trump occupying both sides of the legal dispute, with the Justice Department acting as his ally rather than a genuine adversary. Courts, she argues, are finally forcing him to face real opposition."Trump's past is finally catching up with him," Vance writes.
Norman Eisen, the former White House ethics czar who has been coordinating legal challenges against the Trump administration, declared Friday a landmark day for democracy after courts handed him back-to-back wins on two of the most high-profile cases in his portfolio.In a Substack post titled "Contrarians Strike Two Mighty Blows Against Trump," Eisen described the victories as among the biggest in his organization's more than 300 active legal cases and matters.The first came in the Kennedy Center case, where a federal judge blocked the administration's attempt to close the venue for renovations and ordered Donald Trump's name stripped from the building and its official title within two weeks. The court ruled that only Congress has the power to change the name of the national cultural landmark. Eisen helped argue the case alongside Democracy Defenders Action, the Washington Litigation Group, and Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the lead plaintiff.The second win came in Florida, where Judge Kathleen Williams reopened Trump's IRS lawsuit after Eisen and his partners filed a motion on behalf of 35 bipartisan former federal judges. The judges argued that Trump's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization settlement was a fraud on the court, used to funnel taxpayer money to political allies while shielding Trump, his sons, and his businesses from future prosecution. Williams launched a formal investigation into whether the court had been deceived.Eisen noted that additional courts were also moving against the fund. A judge in the Eastern District of Virginia entered a temporary restraining order blocking the $1.8 billion fund from operating while the case is argued, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed for similar emergency relief in D.C. federal court."I don't think I have ever had two of my cases as the top two stories on both The New York Times and The Washington Post websites," Eisen wrote in the Substack piece, "but that happened Friday because these two wins were good news for democracy."
MAGA is in full implosion mode thanks to a single not safe for work tweet sent out from the official Democrats Twitter account on Wednesday. Yes, the same bully cult that prides itself on trolling liberal accounts all day, every day on every possible social media platform, is clutching their collective pearls over a five-word tweet clapping back at Kapo Nosferatu Stephen Miller. We don’t have enough time or internet space to delve into everything that’s terrible about Miller, but as an American Jew (who’s also a staunch atheist), I can tell you that no one in the Tribe claims such a glaring example of Jewish self-hatred. The guy who separated breastfeeding infants from their mothers at the border (presumably to drink their blood, although I can’t confirm that), describes human beings as “illegals,” and tweets hateful propaganda about all minorites got his vampiric snowflake feelings hurt over the kind of reply liberals usually get from MAGA trolls. Stephen Miller's X account. I realize that’s not the height of political discourse, but it’s just perfect. Short, succinct, and hits MAGA right where they live. I have live replies right now from MAGA trolls that are far worse than that, and it doesn’t even matter when you’re reading this. Because they’ll always be the worst part of social media as long as their cult exists. Liberals immediately began sharing screenshots of the “shut up you ugly f--k” reply to use as evergreen responses to MAGA’s weaker meme game. MAGA snowflakes started with their usual manufactured outrage because their entire default setting is one big perceived slight. Things escalated rapidly thanks to Nosferatu’s wife, Katie, who decided to take it further by revealing the tweet was written by Paulina Mangubat, the DNC’s Deputy Chief Mobilization Officer. Maybe it was just her pregnancy hormones getting the best of her, because Katie is currently carrying their fourth unholy spawn, but she went full MAGA Mean Girl on Paulina.“She’s 30, unmarried with no kids. Put your name on it next time. This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like,” KKKatie tweeted, along with a photo of Mangubat. “It’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”We haven’t been, btw. Single liberal women are pretty happy not to be stuck with an ancient traitorous succubus hanging upside-down all night above our beds, for example. I often find myself hoping that the Millers have designated actually decent people as godparents for their kids, because once both of them are in prison forever, someone needs to make sure those kids unlearn any hate they’ve been carefully taught.Anyway, Paulina has plenty of support online from her co-workers, who understand exactly how effective her tweet was.Paulina also went on the Meidas Touch podcast and was basically all, “I said what I said.”I love her SO MUCH. This is the non-apologetic energy we need to be seeing from Democrats until November. We have only good things to promote about our candidates, while MAGA continues to align behind the worst traitors this country has ever produced.Gone are the days of “When they go low, we go high,” my friends. Democrats are all too often accused of not fighting hard enough, but we’ve seen enough “Nerds vs Bullies” movies to know that we’ve hit the moment in the third act when we build a clubhouse during a montage that’s set to “New Song” by Howard Jones and start doing some serious PT to get ready for the final battle.What first started with Gavin Newsom’s digi team co-opting Trump’s posting style to mock him has now become a full-on campaign tactic for the Democratic Party. Using MAGA’s methods, as well as their own words, is such an incredibly effective tactic. All it took was a little creative use of AI, and boom, MAGA Snowflakes falling everywhere.You know MAGA is worried about the midterms just from the way they’re attacking James Talarico, who’s running for Senate in Texas. Aside from falsely framing him as a vegan in the meat-loving Lone Star State, Stephen Miller’s tweet suggesting Talarico is transgender is full-on defamation. Talarico’s opponent, sex offender Ken Paxton, actually called the devout Christian “Talafreako,” because projection language goes hand-in-hand with their bullying.So what did Talarico’s team do? They took a note from “Dark Brandon” and co-opted his bully’s words to start a trend instead.You can now purchase “Talafreako” t-shirts on his official campaign website. BRILLIANT! I’d wear that and I spent plenty of time tweeting my support of Jasmine Crockett over James Talarico, because I understand the importance of boosting ALL Democratic candidates in ALL states.And I also understand the importance of never letting up on MAGA. We know how to hit them in the feels, and that’s where we need to keep hitting them. Mocking their defense of Trump with screenshots from the Epstein Files is especially effective because they can’t come up with any excuses for defending him.
A Republican strategist predicted that Trump wants to remain in his GOP kingmaker role even more than a third term."I'm not a person who believes he's going to run for a third term," Republican strategist Liam Donavan told journalist Ezra Klein in a video opinion piece. "But could he continue to exert enormous power over the Republican Party by continuing to intervene in primaries all over the country? I think he absolutely could, and you can be the kingmaker even when you're not the king." Trump endorsements have ousted established GOP senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) as well as state lawmakers in Indiana. For Trump, "he is less worried about a world where Democrats have power than he is about a world where Republicans feel empowered to abandon him," Donovan argued."I think just his impulses are to flex his muscles and have Republicans do what he wants," Donovan said.
The Justice Department (DOJ) on Friday asked a federal judge to recuse herself from overseeing the department’s lawsuit against Georgia election officials, arguing that her attendance at an event honoring Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis raises questions about her ability to remain impartial. In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the…
