The Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James are on a crash course toward one of the most challenging negotiations of the NBA offseason.
GOP lawmaker Paul Kanitra rips Democrats for demanding what he calls five-star accommodations for illegal immigrants at Newark's Delaney Hall.
A controversial agreement granting Donald Trump immunity from IRS audits may ultimately prove worthless, according to University of Baltimore School of Law Professor Kim Wehle, who argues in a new column that it may not stand up to legal scrutiny under what are called "creative crimes."As part of a settlement with Trump over a leaked tax return lawsuit, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on an addendum granting the president sweeping tax protections. The IRS agreed to drop all pending audits of Trump — potentially saving him an estimated $100 million in liability — and the one-page document declared the U.S. government is "forever barred and precluded" from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization's tax filings.Writing for The Hill, Wehle's core argument is simple: Trump had no legal authority to grant himself this immunity in the first place. "The whole thing is bogus, so any attempt to use it as a valid legal defense is bogus, too," she wrote.Wehle pointed to Supreme Court precedent suggesting future courts may be willing to invalidate the deal. In July 2024, the Court granted Trump criminal immunity for official acts but explicitly stated that former presidents can still be prosecuted for crimes involving unofficial acts — a category that could theoretically include actions taken to minimize personal tax liability.While "Trump is operating as if he is above the law, there is room for future courts to find liability for 'creative crimes' he commits while in the White House," she elaborated.Even during Trump's first term, when he had a "friendly majority" on the Supreme Court, the justices refused to shield his personal accounting firm from turning over tax returns to congressional committees, the law professor wrote, noting that in 2022 the Court refused to block disclosure of Trump's tax returns and financial records to the House Ways and Means Committee.The critical question, according to Wehle, is not whether Trump currently possesses the constitutional authority to grant himself immunity — he doesn't she maintained — but whether future voters will elect an administration willing to challenge the addendum.If that happens, a future DOJ could argue that the agreement is legally void because Trump lacked authority to execute it. "The government would argue that the addendum should be given no weight because Trump had no legal authority to grant himself such immunity in the first place," Wehle explained.Trump's defense team would inevitably seek to invoke the addendum as a legal shield, but that defense would rest on a fundamentally flawed legal foundation. The deal represents Trump attempting to immunize himself unilaterally — an act that legal scholars argue exceeds presidential authority and could be dismantled by future courts or administrations, Wehle suggested.
Republicans have indicated they intend to portray Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico as a "freak," but he pushed back strongly against his GOP rival in Texas, Ken Paxton.The Donald Trump-endorsed Texas attorney general Paxton slurred the state legislator as "Tala-freako" in his victory speech after beating Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in a closely watched GOP runoff election.Talarico leveled an attack of his own after Paxton and other Republicans smeared him in thinly veiled homophobic language."If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles," Talarico told CBS News. This is the guy who just released Adam Hoffman from jail, an admitted child rapist, after one of Ken Paxton's wealthy lawyer friends got involved in the case. Ken Paxton even kept him off the sex offender registry."Paxton’s office took over the case about three years ago after the locally elected district attorney recused himself, and Hoffman was released from jail this week after serving just under half of a 60-day sentence handed down as part of a plea agreement last month.The 49-year-old Hoffman, a former attorney in Waco, pleaded guilty to reduced charges of indecent assault and displaying harmful materials to a minor, both Class A misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail, as part of an agreement offered by Paxton's office after his trial on first-degree sexual abuse of a young child charges ended in June 2025 in a mistrial.Hoffman had been facing life without parole until Paxton's office reduced the charges in exchange for his guilty pleas, despite a friend of the defendant's son testifying that Hoffman had sexually assaulted him repeatedly over a three-year period starting when the boy was in third grade. - YouTube www.youtube.com
Far-left New York Governor Kathy Hochul's attempt to call President Trump's New York Knicks fandom into question blew up in her face after she made an embarrassing error regarding the team's history. The post New York Governor Kathy Hochul Gets ROASTED After Making This Gaffe While Challenging President Trump’s Knicks Fandom (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
American defense contractors will take upwards of three years to replace the primary munitions the U.S. military used during its 39-day bombing campaign against Iran, according to a new estimate from a D.C.-based think tank, emphasizing the concern from experts that the Iran war could impact a possible future conflict with China. Secretary of War […]
Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton wasted no time appealing to Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) supporters after the longtime incumbent was ousted in a Senate primary runoff against Trump-backed Paxton. Democrats see a moment ripe for the taking to win over Cornyn-backers after party leaders, save for Trump, openly trashed Paxton as a morally […]
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis presented himself as a martyr to free speech after the state Democratic Party censured him for springing an election denier from jail before her sentence ended.The Democratic governor granted clemency to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 for allowing unauthorized individuals to access her office's election system looking for fraud in the 2020 presidential contest, and a Colorado Sun political reporter flagged his appearance Wednesday in a party call."Gov. Jared Polis, fresh off being censured by the Colorado Democratic Party for letting Tina Peters out of prison early, showed up today to a private, internal party call like this #copolitics," posted Sun reporter Jesse Aaron Paul.Paul's photo included a screenshot of the governor wearing headphones and black duct tape over his mouth, which prompted a wave of criticism."Seems to be conflating censured with censored… another sign that his brain has been captured by X/Twitter," muttered Kate Starbird, a computer scientist and former professional basketball player."Alright this guy absolutely has scrambled eggs for brains," agreed New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie."Get off the cross, ding dong," cracked journalist Imani Gandy. "We need the wood.""Powerful people sure do love to whine about there being consequences for their actions, it’s a shame we’ve built an attention economy that rewards that kind of behavior," opined writer Cooper Lund."Polis caved to Trump's months-long pressure campaign against his state to free Tina Peters," stated journalist Lindsay Beyerstein. "Trump did everything from shut down a major climate research facility to denying disaster aid to vetoing a bill to supply clean drinking water to his own supporters in CO. Now Polis wants to play martyr.""How many other people currently locked up in Colorado prisons and jails would he do this for?" wondered writer and activist Chad Stanton."Federal employees are facing NDAs that will functionally silence their ability to tell the public about wrongdoing, and you have the Governor of an entire state cosplaying like a college speaker claiming to be cancelled in 2017," noted University of Michigan policy professor Don Moynihan. "Just not serious.""I really think we should consider the possibility Polis did this for attention," suggested attorney Ken White."Mild consequences for the thing that everyone in the party said was bad? For a rich man?" asked author Courtney Milan."Doing something ugly & stupid, experiencing the entirely predictable social consequences, and then complaining that you are oppressed -- this is the quintessential reactionary move," posted journalist David Roberts. "F--- this dips---.""Governors are not immune from criticism nor from censure by their own parties," added labor lawyer Katelyn Oldham. "If he can't handle this absolutely justified criticism and censure, he needs to resign and get out of politics altogether."
Win It Back PAC, a conservative super PAC, released an ad torching James Talarico, saying the Texas Democratic Senate nominee “fights for 6 genders and all species.” The ad is a compiled video of Talarico’s past posts and bits from his campaign speeches with comments calling him a “Texas trailblazer” and referring to him as […]