A federal judge intends to let lawsuits proceed against President Donald Trump's so-called "Anti-Weaponization Fund" after reports this week that it remains alive and well.

MS NOW legal reporter Fallon Gallagher revealed Thursday that Trump officials haven't "forgotten" about the $1.8 billion fund and are "still fighting to keep it alive."

Politico reported on Friday that U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema explained that public statements from the Trump administration indicated to her that both Trump and Attorney General Todd Blanche are working to keep the fund alive despite promises.

According to the judge, it appears the fund's goals, which are giving money to people who claim they were somehow wronged by the government, could still be fully compensated.

"That could include by paying people directly from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, an open-ended source of money tapped by the Justice Department for many settlements," described Politico.

“That’s being used, apparently, to do exactly what the specific fund in this case was supposed to be doing,” Brinkema told the courtroom during a Friday hearing. “These issues that underlie this case are still alive and kicking, in my view.”

The judge said that when the administration used the fund to hand money over to Jan. 6 attackers it "undermined arguments that a lawsuit filed in May over the 'Anti-Weaponization Fund'" claiming that it was moot.

“That entity is gone, but is a functional equivalent of that going on…?” asked Brinkema. “Actions speak louder than words."

She also noted that the agreement the DOJ entered into with Trump over one of his Florida lawsuits directly violates laws that ban a president from "directly or indirectly" controlling IRS audits.

Former President Richard Nixon was known for using the IRS to obtain information about people on his "enemies list." He also demanded audits and investigations for those on his list. The laws were changed afterward to bar the president's involvement. Trump's deal with the DOJ would have guaranteed that neither he nor anyone in his family would ever be audited by the IRS again.

The DOJ repeatedly promised the judge that the fund was "moot" and that there was little evidence to the contrary.

The government also doesn't want to hand over internal documents or have senior officials, like Blanche, answer questions under oath. Justice Department attorney Andrew Block called the plaintiffs’ requests a “fishing expedition” and said they could involve confidential government communications.

The judge then asked whether the full Trump contract is currently being enforced, but Block said, "I'm not prepared to say that."

“Those present-tense statements do not meet the heavy burden of demonstrating that this case is moot,” said a lawyer working for the coalition of groups who brought the suit. That lawyer, Pooja Boisture, from Democracy Forward, said that Blanche's promises aren't meeting requests for a definitive guarantee.

The judge's refusal to dismiss the lawsuit keeps the matter alive, which means the DOJ must turn over records related to the fund. Blanche and other senior officials are being asked to answer questions about it under oath. Block claimed that there are a slew of "privilege issues" alive in such a demand.

They have 30 days to hand over the records.

President Donald Trump had a plan to rig the 2026 midterms in favor of the Republicans, but every step of the way, he appears to have hit a wall.

iPaper's Max Melzer penned a report Friday that even Trump's U.S. Post Office is ignoring his demands to act as a kind of gatekeeper for mail-in ballots.

Trump attempted to redraw congressional districts, which are only done after new Census Bureau numbers. Instead, states like Texas, Missouri, and others tried to redraw districts based on the 2024 election results favoring Trump and the GOP. There are now concerns that as Trump's 2024 coalition is breaking apart, using that as a guide may not have been the best idea. In Texas, for example, there are three districts that were drawn specifically to be Republican that may flip to Democratic.

FBI Director Kash Patel refused to dissuade concerns that the federal government will send agents, homeland security officers and others to "monitor" the polls on Election Day.

Trump even tried to shove through his own voter restrictions bill that would have put extra barriers to voting freedoms, but with a Republican House and Senate, he failed to get it passed.

Finally, earlier this week, the Supreme Court struck down implementing parts of Trump's executive order that would have restricted access to mailed ballots in states that wouldn't turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. By Thursday, the USPS had stopped working on the lists and was complying with the Supreme Court's order, the Associated Press reported.

"There is now a growing sense of panic among some in the party as the prospect of losing control of both chambers of Congress increases," Melzer wrote for iPaper.

His March executive order implemented many of the demands in his voter restrictions bill, with the added requirement that the USPS pick and choose which ballots were sent to voters. It would have allowed the USPS to decline to deliver any ballot it wanted.

Several states took the administration to court, citing the U.S. Constitution's law mandating that elections be handled by the states. While they won in several lower courts, the decision ultimately handed the victory to the high court.

Melzer called it one of Trump's "high-risk" moves.

Republicans are struggling to stay afloat in a sea of negativity about their party and the president. Americans are struggling to get by in an economy that the GOP swears is doing well. Trump alleged that the affordability crisis was a "hoax." The flubbed war in Iran has driven gas and diesel prices higher and higher.

"Instead of moving to address those concerns, Trump has been focused on pushing some states to re-draw electoral maps in ways that disadvantage Democrats and embarking on a new trade war with Canada that could further push up the price of some US products," wrote Melzer.

It's causing a very public disconnect between voters and Trump, in particular. It's leading to "a deepening sense of unease among Republicans, and his failure to cement an advantage through changing mail-in voting has further exposed the party by diverting time and attention away from its core messaging."

Melzer pointed to one of the glaring examples coming out of Texas, where the U.S. Senate race is competitive after Trump backed a GOP candidate with hefty negatives.

Trump won Texas by double-digit numbers in 2024, but it appears that is gone now.

"The prospect of a Democrat win in what has been a Republican stronghold has served to strengthen fears that Trump’s actions could ultimately cost the party control of Congress," Melzer closed.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who is often called the "Donald Trump whisperer," walked through a range of comments on "The Mishal Husain Show" for Bloomberg News.

While she said she doesn't believe that the U.S. is likely to see someone like Trump again, what he has done to government "is a fundamental re-imagining of the US presidency."

Haberman spoke about the upcoming election and whether Trump traveling around the country to campaign for Republican candidates will help or hurt. Husain asked why Trump hasn't been seen on the campaign trail yet while he's telling crowds to vote like his name is on the ballot. Haberman made it clear that Trump isn't campaigning because his name isn't on the ballot.

"And it's interesting because there was a reason for that for a long time where he would poll somewhat better than the generic Republican brand. I don't think that's the case now, but he said something last year about how he was either proud or honored that Republicans don't do as well when he's not on the ballot," Haberman said.

"He has set up this distance from his own party. And again ... he is viewed as separate from the Republican Party and the brand or the worst of it in terms of how it polls," she added.

Even when Fox host Laura Ingraham asked whether he would be campaigning harder than ever before, Trump answered "no."

The "big test," she said, is whether he will be forced out of what she calls his "unreality bubble" while on the campaign trail. In her book co-written with Jonathan Swan, Haberman said that a story appears about the six people that essentially run the government, noting no one else is invited to those discussions with Trump's top advisors.

"It's hard to break through that unreality bubble with him. Again, this is why being out on the campaign trail will be a big test," Haberman said.

"It's not that he's in a bubble where he's only on Truth Social and he's only watching the markets. He does know about these realities," Haberman explained. "The unreality bubble doesn't mean that he's not aware of actual reality. It just means that he is sticking to his version of reality, but he is briefed. He is told."

"He is briefed on how this is going. He does know what the truth is," said Haberman.

She was asked if he knew just how bad his poll numbers were, and Haberman said he did.

"But again, that's another 'reality is what you make it,' as he projects," she added.

Husain said that if the GOP fails miserably in the election, then it will reflect poorly on him, but Haberman said that Trump doesn't see it that way. So, while he tells his supporters to pretend he's on the ballot, he knows very well that he's not and it's the major reason he doesn't care much.

On issues like AI, Husain questioned why Trump is in such conflict with his own voters.

"I think even more than not registering. I mean, he's made comments that would've been fatal for a politician before about this, that people want to stay poor if they don't want this, everybody should want this," Haberman said. "It goes to the out-of-touch thing that we were talking about. Look, the president believes his own instincts are better than any other data that people give him and any other information."

It's also a reason Trump went into Iran, she said, despite those advising against it. She noted that Trump would love "to cut and run" on Iran, but even that option is off the table.

"He told Tucker Carlson, again, we have this in the book, 'It's going to be okay because it always is.' And in his mind, it always is for him. It's just not always okay for other people, but it certainly is not okay right now, but we'll see," Haberman said.

"The war really was the furthest thing from his mind," she later said.

Another thing that bogged down the administration was the first six months of the "co-presidency" with Elon Musk.

"DOGE just was a failure. It just didn't work. The fact that the GOP Congress has acted like an arm of the executive branch has been pretty shocking in a way I've never seen before in my lifetime," said Haberman. "That is the difference. I talked to Elon Musk for quite a long interview on a stage when he was still running DOGE actually, but not long before he decided that he'd had enough. And I think he really didn't like being asked questions about how that was going because it probably was, I hazard a guess, harder than he imagined it was going to be to make a difference there."

New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan was asked about the new viral AI image going around showing President Donald Trump kissing his top White House aide while on the golf course.

Swan recently co-authored a book with colleague Maggie Haberman, that only interviewed White House staff, not Trump, about the new administration. There were revelations about the aide, Natalie Harp, and her "obsession" with Trump. Harp is the aide who posts Trump's comments to social media and travels with a battery-operated printer to print things out the president asks for something.

The Bulwark's Tim Miller asked for more information about Harp specifically and her relationship with the president.

"I mean the mash notes, the love notes. Maggie did duck the question that I had about whether Trump is impotent or not," Miller said.

A disgusted Swan reacted, "Oh, god. Dude!" Swan ultimately asked, "What are you Howard Stern?"

"Well, I think it's noteworthy that Trump spent his whole career sexually assaulting people for like 30 years. He has like — dozens of women have accused him of sexual assault and now none," Miller said. He said he didn't want Swan to speculate; he wanted to know if there was actual reporting about Trump's health in that regard. Swan said he did no know.

Moving on, Miller asked what might be going on with Harp and the president. "Just, I kind of think it's weird; this is kinda my point. It's weirder than" questions about Trump's virility.

"I think it's uh the story of a young woman who is completely devoted and obsessed with the president," Swan said.

Swan also addressed members of Trump's Cabinet causing him problems, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who's facing accusations of corruption after his department handed a contract to a company working with his sons. That, combined with his association with trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is making Trump look bad.

Swan said that Lutnick recently gave $25 million to the Trump library. "And Trump, in meetings in front of Lutnick and others, would say, 'You know, the only reason I'm putting up with Howard's bull—— is that he gave me $25 million.'"

Swan said that Trump will comment things like, "How great is Howard? You know, I asked him for the money, he gave it straight away."

Republican strategist Doug Hye is concerned that President Donald Trump could destroy GOP campaigns and candidates if they aren't sufficiently loyal to him.

Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fl.) is a recent example of a Republican who shot a direct-to-camera campaign ad while in Washington, begging Trump to stop listening to his advisors on immigration.

Data Analyst Harry Enten had just finished an analysis on the significant loss of support Trump has among Latino voters who cast ballots for him in 2024. At that time, Trump was up 18 points over his Democratic opponent. That has now fallen by over 40 points.

"Well, I think it all comes down to information; both empirical and anecdotal," Hye began. "Empirical: you're seeing all kinds of polling data. And just as the numbers that Harry pointed out, Donald Trump's numbers are underwater on pretty much every issue. That's especially true with Hispanic voters."

He explained that it's especially true in Salazar's district.

"There's also the anecdotal [evidence] of what she's hearing and seeing from her voters when she's home, during recesses and so forth. Clearly, those voters are not happy with the direction of the country," Hye said, noting that the issues aren't merely the single-issue of immigration but also on the economy more broadly.

"Again, not just on immigration and ICE and so forth, but on the economy," Hye continued. Those were both key issues for Trump in 2024.

"He was always way above water on the economy and on immigration, and he's underwater on both of those. And it's why you're seeing Republicans talking a little bit more," Hye said.

CNN host John Berman asked if Hye knew what he was hearing about the House Republican leadership regarding what Salazar did.

Hye explained that during the George W. Bush years, Republicans, including those in the White House, were telling GOP candidates to run from Bush if they needed to. That may not be an option for the GOP with Trump.

"The difference between then and now — the poll numbers are sort of similar between Bush and Trump. The difference is Trump. How does Donald Trump react to this ad? How does Donald Trump react to any Republican who crosses him? And that's a real problem for these Republican candidates, as they decide what they need to do to get reelected. If they speak out against Trump, they know that Donald Trump could try and just sweep the rug out from under them."

He called it the "real Sword of Damocles" hanging over the heads of the candidates. "And it's the corner that Republicans have backed themselves into."

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President Donald Trump on Thursday hit a massive hurdle in his effort to remake the Kennedy Center in his image.

Trump's personally-picked executive director of the theater and monument claimed he doesn't believe the building is "safe" and said that is the reason for the closure. After a huge storm with hurricane-level winds moved through Washington D.C. in early September, a large chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. For about 10 days there was a rope around the area where it fell.

It was not until this week that fencing began going up around the Kennedy Center, sparking concerns that Trump would bulldoze it the way he did with the East Wing of the White House.

Lawyer Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund told National Public Radio that the only reason Trump wants to close the building and tear it apart is out of "embarrassment."

"Donald Trump slapped his name on this building, and it drove artists and audiences away and cratered the very successful ongoing operation of the Kennedy Center. He's closing it to cover up the fact of his mismanagement," Eisen said.

Congress has already allocated $257 million for repairs in the building that Trump claimed he needed. The plan was to do these renovations in stages so that shows could continue. Now there is no season for the Kennedy Center after so many performers pulled out.

Eisen said there's no reason to close it and "there's certainly no reason to demolish it."

The Kennedy Center completed a major multi-million-dollar expansion and renovation in 2019, adding an annex and doing other projects. So, there have been larger questions about why Trump has painted the building as dilapidated.

The judge ruled that there must be 30 days' notice in advance if there is a destruction order or if it intends to "significantly overhaul" the building.

"The judge has made very clear, including in our repeated wins on the naming of the building, that Donald Trump can't rename it for himself. What an absurd suggestion that Congress has legislated the operations of this building, naming it. Otherwise, that's an emergency order," Eisen said.

The NPR host Michel Martin asked about the East Wing of the White House. Given what Trump did to the structure last year, there have been fears that he'll do it to the Kennedy Center and whatever other buildings he wants.

"Do you think that the administration is already trying to cause permanent changes or damage to the building, and do you have any confidence that you and other litigators addressing this can keep the Kennedy Center from facing a different fate than the White House East Wing has already done?" Martin asked.

Eisen agreed that he thinks that's what they're talking about.

"I do think that the administration is contemplating demolition out of embarrassment and humiliation," said the lawyer. "First, because affixing Donald Trump's name destroyed the artist and audience base, and second, because the court won't let him keep his name on there, and he's saying the quiet part out loud."

Eisen said that, unlike with the East Wing, there was already litigation in place over the Kennedy Center.

"We had a judge assigned," he explained. "We immediately went to the judge. We got an order before the demolition had substantially commenced. There has been some glancing damage that they started to do. We got that order, and the Kennedy Center will not meet the fate of the East Wing."

"We worked overnight, as you heard; there was a blizzard of motions by our legal team motions by our legal team, and we succeeded. There will be no demolition, Donald Trump's name will never go on the building, and it will never be demolished," Eisen promised.

The opener of the Buffalo Bills featured the Canadian national anthem at the game on Thursday night and MAGA is losing their collective minds.

Playing "O, Canada" isn't something new for the Bills, which, thanks to proximity to the northern border, brings in fans from both countries. While they don't play the Canadian national anthem at every game, they're known for playing it on special occasions, local news reported. It was a gesture that the late owner, Ralph Wilson, supported.

Still, given the conflict between Trump and Canada, MAGA supporters are enraged over the move, believing it was an intentional slight against the president.

"The Buffalo Bills played the Canadian national anthem at their game last night and MAGA is losing their minds over it. Total snowflakes! It was great to see! Canada is our friend," Democratic activist Harry Sisson posted on X.

"Singing the Canadian National Anthem at the Buffalo Bills home opener was a mistake... There's ZERO reason to honor a foreign country when a Canadian team is not involved in this game whatsoever. This was an idiotic decision," said OutKick content creator Jon Root, who talks about the intersection of sports and culture.

"What in the world did I just watch?! The Lions/Bills game just started off with the CANADIAN national anthem. I s—— you not, and it's being played in Buffalo, NY," said poster LD Basler, who describes himself as "MAGA AF."

"Wow! I'm glad I didn't watch any of that game. I guess there is no point in watching the Buffalo Bills of the Canadian Football League," one person replied.

"Only in America will a National Football team (Buffalo Bills) play the Canadian National Anthem before our own Anthem on their home opener, in a brand new stadium to appease the anti-American Socialists on the other side of the pond!" said one woman identifying herself as pro-life and MAGA.

Kevin MacFarland, whose handle is "GOPChairperson," posted a driving map showing just how close Buffalo is to Canada. "Quick geography lesson for the MAGA r—— before they crash out over Buffalo recognizing their Canadian fans tonight."

He was flooded with angry responses.

"Who gives a f—— what you say? Buffalo Bills is an American team not a Canadian team. Go f—— Home," a man named Erik Coda responded.

"I’m glad the Bills haven’t won the Super Bowl especially after finding out how unpatriotic most people in Buffalo are. At this rate just move the Bills to the CFL and give Austin a team since most people of Buffalo want to be Canadian so bad," said Phil Parkinson.

Depending on where you stand in the city, Buffalo is less than a mile from the Canadian border and about two to five miles from downtown Buffalo to Canada.

The American national anthem was played after the Canadian one.

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan spoke at The Atlantic Festival Thursday, where the former detailed her predictions about President Donald Trump's presidency if Democrats take over one or both houses of Congress.

In a discussion about pardons and members of the administration breaking laws, court rulings, or orders, Haberman said that one thing that Steven Miller learned is that if the president declares an emergency, he can do whatever he wants. That combined with "an utterly compliant House GOP and slightly less so but fairly compliant Republican Senate" is how Trump has accomplished what he has.

Aside from the "emergency powers" efforts, another option is for Congress to hand over its power.

"And so, not to get too hyper local here, but there are many ways in which this government reminds me of like 1970s New York," Haberman said. "And the reason I say that is that that is Donald Trump's, you know, sort of, model of executive power."

She said that he's known for talking about the former Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, Meade Esposito, from the 1960s and 1970s. It's similar to his compliments for Xi Jinping, who he said "rules with an iron fist." That has become a kind of model for Trump.

"His own political lieutenants use it about how they have maintained control over Congress," said Haberman. "And one of the reasons that corruption was so rampant in the 60s and 70s in machine politics in New York City is because the party bosses controlled anybody who would investigate. They picked the judges. They picked the DAs."

"So, if you have control of anybody who might investigate you or raise questions, it isn't just about saying yes. It's about every check in society that we are used to. That creates an entirely different form of government," she explained.

Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta acknowledged that those involved in news and politics have become "a bit desensitized" after two years of watching it. However, "if we saw it unfolding elsewhere in the world, I think we would have a term for it. We would certainly be describing it more colorfully than we in the American press are accustomed to describing our own government."

But unlike in other countries, there's a time limit on Trump, Alberta said, calling the president a "lame duck." It prompted him to wonder how Trump is handling something like that and whether he'll be willing to stand down so JD Vance can step up.

Swan said that in their recent book they describe a scene in which Rupert Murdoch comes to the White House and has dinner with Vance and Marco Rubio along with a few other typical far-right appointees. In the event, Trump begins a conversation asking about Vance and Rubio for 2028, which Swan called "a beauty pageant, essentially."

Trump knows full well that Murdoch can't stand Vance and worked to stop Trump from appointing Vance. Murdoch said, "JD has the potential to be great." When asked about Rubio, Murdoch said: "Marco is brilliant."

"And it's this savage moment," Swan said. "It just foretells what the next two years are going to be like."

So, the way he's grappling with being a "lame duck," Swan said, is that he's simply refusing to be one. So, the idea that it will be a smooth path to a 2028 nomination and candidacy, "is contradicted by every piece of evidence we have about the way Trump behaves."

Haberman predicted, "This is not going to look like any kind of congressional flip that we’ve seen before in a lame-duck presidency, in terms of oversight."

She said that Trump believes he's immune from any federal prosecution and he's "talked about pardons very openly."

Trump knows that he is immune from federal prosecution. Um, he has talked about pardons very openly. We spoke to a number of people during the reporting of the book who are counting on their pardons. So, I expect that will be sweeping. We've never seen a government just not respond to subpoenas in Congress across the board."

At the same time, a contempt referral goes to Trump's government for prosecution.

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Dual court filings have been flying through most of Thursday as one member of the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts battles for the preservation of the building. As one CNN reporter explained, the situation "escalated quickly."

Overnight, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) that the board illegally closed the building in defiance of the judge's order. The filing also said that there is a very real concern that President Donald Trump will demolish the building the way he did with the East Wing of the White House. The evidence they provided was a photo of the president in Marine One with a giant poster saying "Kennedy Center DEMOLISH or "DEMOLISHED"; the full word can't be seen.

"Well, things, Boris, are frankly very legally and politically messy right now over the fate of this building," said CNN reporter Sunlen Sefaty to co-host Boris Sanchez. "And frankly, things have escalated rather quickly in the last 24 hours, not the least of which is because you have the president out there warning that the building potentially could be ripped down."

Trump also told the press at Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday evening that the building was a "loser."

Trump claimed he and his administration "should certainly have recognition," or the iconic theater will "end up being ripped down."

"For me to go and fix it, I'm the one capable of fixing it and then have to subsidize it for years to come, because you will lose with the Kennedy Center," Trump said, saying that they lost "hundreds of millions of dollars … before I got involved."

In fact, until the president took over, fired the board and added his name, the Kennedy Center was turning a profit. In the fiscal year ending in September 2023, the Kennedy Center recorded a profit of about $6.4 million, The Washington Post reported.

"So for the Trump administration, for me, to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition," the president continued. "Because frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down. It's in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape."

That quote ended up in Beatty's overnight court filing, saying that it is clear Trump wants to demolish the building because he's angry about losing the lawsuits and being forced to take his name off it.

On Wednesday, fencing was brought in to begin going around the Kennedy Center, and witnesses saw a forklift repeatedly collide with the building's pillars, Beatty's first court filing said.

The Justice Department claimed in a filing that the Kennedy Center isn't closing, but that they're simply doing some renovations because it isn't "safe." The Trump-appointed director of the Kennedy Center, Matt Floca, was the one who alleged the building wasn't safe and the DOJ claimed in its filing that he did so without any coordination with the White House. Until he was promoted to direct the entire organization, Floca was "in charge of HVAC and toilets."

The court filing from Beatty said that the Kennedy Center board initially told her legal team that a "loudspeaker announcement" about closure resulted from someone improperly triggering a fire alarm.

Less than 24 hours later, the Justice Department was describing the shutdown as a management decision responding to “imminent life-safety risks.” Beatty’s filing calls that explanation inconsistent and "pretextual." It notes that the cited triggering incident, a September 4 storm that caused water-damaged plaster to fall from the Grand Foyer ceiling, happened 12 days before the building was shuttered. The Center remained open through those 12 days with nothing more than an area cordoned off.

In its filing, the DOJ swears that it will only be a seven-day closure, despite the fence being erected around the full building to repair the plaster that fell from the ceiling inside.

The DOJ said that they're not breaking the judge's orders to keep the building open and operational. Instead, the administration said the judge’s order allows an emergency closure and that they don't have to keep the Center open if there are "safety hazards."

The Justice Department asks the judge to reject Beatty’s request for an emergency hearing.

Republican-appointed Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota served as chief justice when the state exploded into protests and federal agents opened fire on citizens. His loyalty to President Donald Trump, however, hasn't matched that of some of his conservative counterparts.

In an extensive interview with The New York Times, Schiltz said he has a serious concern about the administration's "disregard for court orders" and fears that the Justice Department is "clogging his courthouse" to the point that they can't get anything accomplished. It's such a huge problem that he fears it's "putting the constitutional order at risk."

It has “created a grave threat to the rule of law," he said in a 90-minute interview along with six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench appointed from both Democratic and Republican presidents.

“I would say aloud to myself, ‘This just never happens,’” he said about the orders that were violated by the Justice Department.

Legal affairs reporter Mattathias Schwartz noticed in Schiltz's chambers signed photos of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, whom the Minnesota judge clerked for.

Schiltz served as the district’s chief judge from mid-2022 through June 2026, spending months navigating "a deteriorating relationship with the Justice Department and a flood of lawsuits that combined to put their court under tremendous pressure," the Times said.

The courthouse was a mess, Schiltz and his fellow judges agreed, with 1,116 petitions from detainees seeking release, the report explained. In January alone, federal immigration authorities violated nearly 100 orders.

Other judges, including Trump appointees, also intervened. Judge Nancy Brasel, who was appointed by Trump in 2018, was pushed to order that detainees had constitutional rights, including access to lawyers.

“Due process is not a game of keep-away," she said in one order.

Judge Eric Tostrud, another judge appointed by Trump in 2018, held the government's feet to the fire, demanding at one point that they must preserve evidence related to one of the civilian killings.

Tostrud has recently taken over as the chief after Schiltz took a kind of semi-retirement known as "senior status," the Times explained.

Behind the scenes of the judges' conflicts with the DOJ, they were also facing "a deluge of violent threats," they said.

Any time there was a major ruling their phones in the chambers would "sometimes ring nonstop." Clerks logged calls from hundreds of people coming in daily. Judge Jerry W. Blackwell, appointed by President Joe Biden, shared an emailed thread reading "kill u soon."

The court was ultimately moved to craft its own internal system for tracking people who issue multiple threats to aid the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees security for federal judges.

Over the course of several months, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen's office was in disarray. Blackwell said that he was hemorrhaging lawyers and career staffers who wanted no part of the DOJ's mess. At one point they were so desperate for lawyers that the Pentagon sent folks in to help. One famously melted down, saying that the job "sucks" and the system was “broken.”

"And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” prosecutor Julie Le told the judge at the time after she was asked why his orders were being ignored. “Sometimes I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep."

What appeared to be broken, she alleged, is that ICE would arrest people or detain migrants and then ignore the DOJ when they had to appear in court.

“Fixing a system, a broken system, I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do it,” she said.

The DOJ ultimately fired her.

She wasn't the only one dealing with the huge influx, however. Court employees were working 16-hour days, seven days a week, without overtime pay, while judges constantly monitored devices for emergency filings. Judges developed shared templates and informal systems to manage the workload, worried that delays could result in detainees being transferred out of state before courts could intervene.

Ultimately, Judge Schiltz issued an order in January warning the feds: “ICE is not a law unto itself."

Looking back, he said, “My impression was that most, if not all, of the noncompliance was due to incompetence, not due to conscious defiance of orders."

It became clear that the violations came as a result of a lack of resources that the federal government should have anticipated. Those violations, he argued, should be taken seriously because such mistakes threaten the foundations of the legal system.

Following the laws, whether a prosecutor or a defendant, is why people feel safe, he argued.

“You walk down the street, and you assume you’re generally safe because of the law,” he said. “It’s the rule of law. If you don’t have it, you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea.”

The report concludes that Minnesota’s judges saw the surge as more than an immigration dispute. They believed routine government compliance with court orders was essential to democratic stability. As Schiltz put it, without the rule of law, a country risks either “anarchy or authoritarianism.”

Former George W. Bush advisor Mark McKinnon told Republicans the best thing they can do for themselves as they fight for their elections is "run away" from President Donald Trump.

Trump appeared in North Carolina on Wednesday night, where he threatened to turn the state into "a killing field" if former popular Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is elected to the U.S. Senate.

"I'll tell you the one thing you can't do very successfully is attack Roy Cooper," said McKinnon on Thursday. "He's the most popular Democrat in the history of North Carolina politics. And he's going to win that race big."

McKinnon noted that "voters in America feel a loss of control."

McKinnon told MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle that adding up "the war inflation, throw on top of that, artificial intelligence and data centers, people just feel like they're losing control. And that's a really tough argument for the Republicans to get back on track on because they don't have a good one."

Ruhle then showed former Bush political strategist Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal Wednesday night that he'll be voting for a Democrat in Texas. McKinnon gave Rove props for saying publicly and putting it in a conservative newspaper like the Journal.

"It's needed to be said because what's happened, I think, and you can say it on both sides, really, the extremes have gotten so carried away and nobody's throwing any flares," McKinnon said. "They're just saying, well, that's just the way it is today. Well, Karl said, not on my watch. And I love him for it."

Ruhle then cited the AFP/Getty photo taken of Trump aboard Marine One on Wednesday night, where the president was seen looking at a giant poster that reads, "Kennedy Center DEMO." Other photos show a few more letters and it appears to spell out DEMOLISH or DEMOLITION. The photo triggered enough of an alarm that overnight court filings alerted the judge to concerns Trump is preparing to bulldoze the monument to the late President John F. Kennedy.

"Where on Earth does this come from? The Kennedy Center!" Ruhle exclaimed.

Semafor congressional bureau chief Burgess Everett shook his head and said that it's clear Trump is focused on things that no other GOP candidates care about.

Ruhle interrupted to say that not even the MAGA base cares about these monuments to Trump.

"The president just wants to reshape Washington," Everett said. "I don't think he really cares. And physically, I mean, physically reshape the city. And I don't think he necessarily cares who he ticks off in doing it. Kennedy Center, the arch. This is a president who wants his name on things all across D.C."

He noted that friends who've come to D.C. and haven't been in a while are shocked to see his face displayed all over the city on buildings and banners everywhere.

"So, you know, I do not know who is asking for the demolition of the Kennedy Center, but I can tell you that the president wants his name on it, and he appears to be willing to do whatever it takes to get there, including closing it. He closed it this week. I mean, that in itself is very surprising and not something I would have had on my bingo card," Everett said.

President Donald Trump's administration is back in court Thursday morning over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Wednesday night, AFP/ Getty photographer Brendan Smialowski captured pictures of a giant poster board inside of President Donald Trump's Marine One helicopter as he was landing at the White House. Through the windows, it was clearly seen that he was looking at something that read, "Kennedy Center demolish" or "demolishing."

Former CBS News reporter Seth MacFarlane reported that Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the only non-Trump nominee left on the Kennedy Center board, alerted the judge to the photo, showing that Trump is considering demolishing the building.

The judge is set to discuss on Thursday. The photos resulted in a quick filing from Beatty saying that the first indication was a comment from Trump to the media: "For the Trump administration, for me, to get involved, and to take on long term, and to carry it, or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close, it will end up being ripped down."

The second piece of concern was the photo from Smialowski.

"Given the emergency nature of this matter and Defendants’ 10 a.m. filing deadline for their response to Plaintiff’s motion, Plaintiff wanted to make sure the Court and Defendants are aware of this new information," the filing said.

The issue all comes from Trump’s effort to attach his name to a memorial for slain President John F. Kennedy, and the legal limits on presidential power. The memorial for Kennedy was established by Congress, funded, in part, by Congress, and largely controlled by Congress. After Trump bulldozed the White House, his renovation projects have drawn more significant scrutiny.

Trump moved in February 2025 to remove much of the Kennedy Center’s existing board, install allies and make himself chairman. The new board ruled to change programming and leadership, which prompted backlash from artists, ticket buyers and some board members. As a result, several performers and companies canceled appearances, indicating they didn't want to be associated with performing at a Trump-named property or for Trump.

Federal Judge Christopher Cooper previously ruled that Congress created the John F. Kennedy Center as a memorial to JFK and that only Congress, not Trump or a trustee board, can change its name or add a presidential memorial there. Trump was also blocked from adding a plaque of his name, statue of himself, or any other items highlighting himself to the building.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten in Thursday walked through the likability problem one of President Donald Trump's top officials is facing.

As the Iran war rages onward and more and more evidence is revealed about just how badly America is fairing, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could be caught holding the bag. Voters and defense insiders see Hegseth as putting his own personal culture-war politics, individual loyalty and public spectacle ahead of top military matters like readiness, competent management and transparent accountability.

Enten explained that Hegseth's numbers are now as low as Donald Rumsfeld's were ahead of the 2006 GOP bloodbath election in which Democrats ended the GOP control over government.

"You know, we start off the title slide asking who hates Hegseth? And basically everyone," Enten explained. "If you're the American public, no wonder, no wonder the speaker sent everybody home. Because just take a look here. Hegseth net approval: You know, back before the Iran war started back in January of 2026, right? It was minus nine points. You think that's tough?"

Hegseth is now at minus 25, which is exactly the number Rumsfeld reached just before the 2006 election. He was ultimately fired by then-President George W. Bush. Rumsfeld was dealing with the unpopular Iraq war. Rumsfeld reached an all-time low at -38 points, and Hegseth isn't there yet.

His low standing also reflects the unpopularity of the Iran war and the controversy over his treatment of senior military leaders.

Even before the war started, Enten said that Hegseth was suffering from a -20 point score. It isn't merely Democrats either, he's underwater with Independents to the tune of -43 points.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sent members home early Wednesday after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced Articles of Impeachment for the secretary.

"No wonder Speaker Johnson did not want his Republican representatives to actually have to vote on this, because if they voted with the president, they'd be voting against the American public. Because the bottom line is, Pete Hegseth is hated by basically everyone," Enten said.

Ex-Republicans Tim Miller and Bill Kristol recalled in The Bulwark podcast that ahead of the 2006 election, Bush desperately wanted to fire Rumsfeld, but decided not to, saying he didn't want to give Democrats ammunition. They both thought that was a dumb move.

"So, you see this comparison between Pete Hegseth and Donald Rumsfeld, right? And you say, okay, how are the wars actually being judged? And this, to me, is probably one of the most dangerous signals for Republicans as they head into this midterm election, because it was the Iraq War that was part of the reason that Republicans lost those House and Senate majorities," Enten recalled.

Ironically, the Iraq War wasn't that unpopular in Sept. 2006. The Iran war is a very different matter at -23 points.

"Very similar to what Pete Hegseth's own net popularity rating is. His net approval rating -23 -25," Enten continued. "The Iran war is actually a bigger drag, at least in the abstract, than the Iraq war was. And so you see this right here: You see Pete Hegseth's unpopularity."

He reiterated that this is why Republicans don't want to have to answer for Hegseth.

"And again, I just say Republican representatives do not want to have to answer for Pete Hegseth or this war when it comes to the midterm election because if they do, you can say, 'see you later. Goodbye' to that House majority, for sure. And that Senate majority may be as well. It is not good news for Republicans when it comes to this war or Pete Hegseth individually," he closed.

American political scientist Daniel W. Drezner's Thursday Substack post argues that one of the defining sources of President Donald Trump's power has been his ability to instill fear in his opponents.

Infamously, Trump told then-The Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in 2016, "Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear."

The quote ultimately became the title of their book about the president, his first campaign and the early days of his first term. But now Drezner thinks that Trump has lost that swagger.

In Machiavellian terms, Drezner says Trump long operated on the principle that it was better to be feared than loved.

"His ability to move fast and destroy things is truly unparalleled in modern American politics, which might be why so many techbros still like him," said Drezner. "His power to destroy also inculcated fear in broad swathes of the American body politic — which, in turn, made Trump seem even more powerful. Even those folks who opposed his moves believed that his threats and actions were consequential. Or, to put this in Machiavellian terms, Trump did not care if he was loved so long as he was feared."

That fear, however, is faltering, "if the polling is accurate," he noted. In fact, Drezner thinks that tech bros are the only ones left who like Trump.

He noted that it appears that, for the past few weeks, story after story has been about Trump "losing." But it also appears his heart isn't in it anymore, as his responses have become "empty and boring."

The perfect example is Trump walking away from his disaster in Iran. Over the past week, Trump's negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have focused more on the war between Russia and Ukraine. Meanwhile, a CBS News report revealed shocking photos of U.S. properties around the Middle East that have been completely demolished by Iran's attacks.

A separate report from the New York Times claimed that allies in the area are rethinking their alliance, "because U.S. bases no longer hold any deterrent value."

The New York Times’ Tony Romm reported Wednesday that Trump was furious when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates this week, as inflation doesn't appear to be improving and gas prices continue to climb.

"President Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve on Wednesday over its decision to raise interest rates, as he reprised his earlier threats to cut off a broad swath of U.S. trade unless the central bank bows soon to his demands for lower borrowing costs," said the Times.

Drezner described it as "impotency in the face of political and policy challenges."

Meanwhile, before Trump jetted off to North Carolina, he told the press that if Canada joined in an alliance with the European Union over trade then he'd cut off all trade with both.

"To be clear, no one believes that Trump can or will cut off all trade with Europe," Drezner said. "It’s a nonsense threat — but it also highlights just how badly the Trump administration has played its geoeconomic hand."

And while Trump continues to lose in trade wars and military wars, Drezner said "China is reaping significant long-term benefits from Trump’s repeated own-goals."

The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos wrote: “In Beijing, a think tank at Renmin University recently published an assessment titled ‘Thank Trump,’ which wryly hailed his efforts to hasten the ‘twilight of an empire,’ by undermining America’s alliances, civil service, scientific institutions, and democratic credibility.”

It's clear, Drezner explained, Trump has lost his control-by-fear. It's something that Drezner said even Machiavelli said "should be avoided at all costs."

President Donald Trump hurt his own chances at taking over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a legal analyst explained. It's unknown if Trump ever would have been able to turn the monument to the late President John F. Kennedy into a joint monument, but senior counsel Joshua Kolb said it certainly isn't happening now.

This week, a judge shut down Trump's demand to add some kind of tribute to himself at the Kennedy Center, resulting in a presidential "tantrum" with its board, according to the one Democrat left on the board. The board then ordered that the theatre be shut down entirely.

"He went into a tantrum," said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). "I mean, let me just make it simple. It was the most unprofessional thing that I've ever witnessed or been a part of. He went into name-calling, everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb. He said, 'I think you're incompetent.' And I said, 'I know you're incompetent.'"

Kolb, from the Democracy Defense Fund, told CNN on Wednesday that Trump caused his own problems when he admitted that if he couldn't have his name on the Kennedy Center, he'd shut it down.

"Trump gave the game away," Kolb wrote on BlueSky.

"The judge also said that they actually can't shut down the Kennedy Center," he said. "That will be in violation of the judge's preliminary injunction, and it will be courting contempt. We've already gone to court to enforce the judge's preliminary injunctions. That's the latest victory that we had in court. It's been very clear repeatedly over the course of months that the Kennedy Center cannot be shut down in violation of that court order."

"And President Trump now has sort of given the game away. He tied the two issues together in his Truth Social posts yesterday, where he basically," Kolb said. "And he admitted that if he can't get his way, if he can't get his name on the Kennedy Center in violation of the law, then he will shut the Kennedy Center down in violation of a court order that can't stand."

When asked whether he believes in the claim that the Center is being closed for "safety reasons," Kolb cited comments from Beatty that described a nationwide tradition to do renovations while staying open to keep funding coming in and "the show goes on."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

A meeting with Republicans got "personal" overnight as members fought with Speaker Mike Johnson over his last-minute fixes to help the economy.

The Washington Sun (formerly NOTUS) reported Wednesday that at one point a shouting match broke out between the members, with curse words flying.

At one point, a source in the room conveyed, Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R), the lone Republican in the Maryland delegation, was so livid he began banging on the desk and yelling, “This is f—— war! This is war!”

At issue was Johnson's support for Harris' bill to kill the federal gas tax ahead of the election. AAA put the national average fuel price at $4.37 on Wednesday, but diesel has now climbed to $6.31 per gallon. It comes as farmers are starting fall harvest season and problems in the Middle East persist.

"Harris leveraged his vote on a rule earlier in the day to get a concession that leaders would consider moving the legislation," The Sun reported. "Leaders promised him on the floor earlier in the day that they would convene a meeting to discuss the possibility of suspending the gas tax."

That didn't go well, however, and quickly collapsed into "chaos," the report said, citing five sources in the room.

The instigator was Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He had a printout of a tweet from Graves from 2022 criticizing President Joe Biden for a similar effort to suspend the gas tax when Russia invaded Ukraine and drove up fuel prices. Harris said at the time that the only solution was "drill, baby, drill."

“Suspending the federal gas tax is just another Biden Administration stunt to distract from their self-inflicted crisis,” Harris claimed. Now, Graves implied, Harris wanted to do the same and he's against it.

After promising "war," Harris reportedly stormed out as Johnson begged him to stay and "talk this out."

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) took off after Graves in Harris' absence.

“Why do you have to come at him personally?” Higgins asked. “You disrespectful fool!”

He then stormed out too.

Sources told The Sun it was "one of the craziest meetings they had ever been part of."

Higgins kept the fight going, attacking Graves on X, saying he was an “Establishment elitist” with a “lifetime Heritage score of 69.”

The inside baseball attack refers to the Heritage Foundation's political scorecard. Graves' score this session is 50 percent. On Wednesday morning, the House leadership announced that it would end the session early after returning from a month-long recess. Instead of moving forward, the House's final day will be Sept. 16 and they won't return until after the Nov. 3 election.

Reporter Chris Whipple penned a column for Vanity Fair about Vice President JD Vance and his political transformation at Yale Law School, prompting The Bulwark's Sam Stein to question how Vance's relationship will likely unfold for the 2028 presidential election. Whipple made it clear, he thinks Trump will "destroy" Vance "come next year."

Speaking on the Wednesday podcast, Whipple said that when people in the White House were still talking to him, he recalled Vance defending Trump's remarks about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"He told me, 'No! The media got that totally wrong!' I don't know what the media got wrong about Trump referring to 'very fine people on both sides' who were marching with neo-Nazis with tiki torches chanting 'blood and soil,'" said Whipple.

"But I think Vance is in a really difficult, fraught position because, as one person put it to me on background, at a certain point he's going to start to get traction," Whipple said. "Vance is, if he is indeed the frontrunner, he's going to start to run ads. He's going to start to have rallies. People will pay attention. Trump will not be able to stand that. Trump will not be able to share that spotlight. And come next year, he will destroy him. He will take him down."

He added that he's spoken with Steve Bannon about Vance as well and Bannon agrees that it won't go well.

"Bannon told me that he thinks this relationship is only going to go south in a hurry," Whipple said.

Stein questioned whether there's any relationship that Trump has "in politics that hasn't eventually gone south" at one point.

"I mean, there's no amount of, you know, loyal. The loyalty is usually in one direction and you can be one of the great suck-ups of the world. You can acquiesce as much as you possibly can, but eventually those relationships go south," Stein said.

"Almost inevitably, almost inevitably," Whipple agreed.

The other question Stein asked was whether Vance cares about anything other than his own advancement.

"It seems to me there are two schools of thought about JD Vance. One is that we've already discussed, which is the notion that he's a cynical opportunist who will just go with the wind. But the other school of thought is that he is unlike Trump, who has no convictions or beliefs and is transactional about everything," said Whipple.

"Vance is actually a true believer in a post-Trump MAGA ideology, a worldview that is more authoritarian, and is in fact a kind of Catholic theocracy. And it goes back to this guy, Patrick Deneen at Notre Dame," Whipple said.

He noted that both Vance and Peter Thiel both have been influenced by Deneen. Thiel is searching for a more apocalyptic, anti-regulation world than a church-run state. He argues that an “Antichrist” could emerge as a seemingly benevolent global authority that uses fears about AI, climate change, nuclear war and safety to centralize power, restrict technology and impose a one-world government.

"That's a real worry about Vance — is that he actually believes in this stuff. And that he has the intellectual shock troops in place," Whipple said. "But there are people who think that Vance is actually a true believer in something that is much more ideological than MAGA."

Stein doesn't buy it. He said that a person "can't go from secretly advising Jake Sullivan on how to clean up the 'deplorables' so that Trump won't win, to now believing in this stuff. Like, something seems a little bit off-kilter."

Whipple thinks both options could also be true.

The North Carolina Appeals Court has cemented the state legislature's "power grab" over elections, taking control from the State Board of Elections and handing it to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek a local reporter said.

WRAL reporter Will Doran said on X on Wednesday that the court said that since the legislature didn't hand power to itself, it was a legal move. Doran noted that elections will be run by someone other than the executive branch "for the first time in 125 years."

The 51-page order walks through the 2-1 party-line vote and said that the legislature didn't violate the North Carolina Constitution’s separation of powers clause by taking away executive authority

The News & Observer reported that the judges did acknowledge that it "resulted in a partisan shift."

After the 2024 election, the legislature changed the law that allowed the governor to appoint members to the State Board of Elections to the lower-level state auditor post. Voters were angry because they cast ballots without knowing that the new auditor would control the elections board.

All 100 county election boards will also now be controlled by the far-right auditor. It means that the elections board has gone "from having a 3-2 Democratic majority to now having a 3-2 Republican majority," WRAL reported.

Democrats believe that it's part of an effort involving the GOP's efforts to overturn the results of a still-uncalled election for the state Supreme Court last year. The current board of elections is fighting not to have thousands of ballots thrown out. The new board, however, could eliminate ballots that supported Democrat Allison Riggs' candidacy.

"I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court," Gov. Josh Stein (D) said in a statement on Wednesday after the ruling. "No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit [Boliek] to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race."

The appeals court attempted to keep the identity of who voted for and against the ruling a secret, but Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin's spokesman revealed he wasn't one of the judges who issued the ruling. Griffin still sits on the Court of Appeals while his election lawsuit continues to play out.

WRAL also clarified, "Republican lawmakers have been trying to take elections power away from the governor's office ever since Democrat Roy Cooper unseated former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, in 2016."

Semafor reporter David Weigel commented that the ruling is "One of the funniest power grab stories. Why give the elections power to state auditor, which never handled them before, and not secretary of state? Because NC Dems narrowly held SecState but narrowly lost the auditor race."

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have spent the year trying to negotiate with both Iran and Russia over wars with no end in sight.

The Bulwark's Cathy Young is is calling them both clowns in her recent piece.

While things were going well at the start of the Iran negotiations, President Donald Trump's decision to start bombing ended it all, The New Yorker recalled in an extensive piece on Kushner. It has been downhill from there. But Iran isn't the only war.

Young recalled the 2024 campaign promise that he'd end the war with Russia and Ukraine "on day one." In fact, Trump said he could probably end the war before he officially took office. It has been 17 months, and Trump continues to fail.

Kushner and Witkoff don't have any experience as diplomats or negotiators, and the inexperience has shown, Young explained.

"It’s safe to say that in the entire known history of diplomacy, there has never been a more clownish team of envoys than Witkoff and Kushner," the column said. "It’s hard to find as much unanimity on anything in the Ukrainian media and among the independent Russian punditry as there is on this pair."

She cited a "widely circulating sobriquet Vityok i zyatyok," the nickname is "a pun involving a Russian nickname for 'Victor' and a diminutive for 'son-in-law.'" It's difficult to translate, but the sentiment, she said, is like calling the men "the Two Stooges."

Witkoff, Young explained, embodies a "cluelessness and obsequiousness with Putin," and it goes back long enough to be "legendary."

“When we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all,” Witkoff told a Kremlin autocrat.

The most recent iteration of "negotiations" involved both men, whom Young called "Tweedledum and Tweedledumber," accomplishing nothing with their recent trip to Moscow. They had the same “peace proposals” and used the same recycled comments about “constructive” and “candid” conversations.

"However, most Russian-speaking observers noticed one richly symbolic detail. At one point on their visit to Moscow, the envoys had dinner with Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev at a Moscow restaurant whose exterior featured the large slogan, 'EVERYTHING FOR VICTORY!' It doesn’t seem especially suggestive of a desire for peace," wrote Young.

The men also went to Ukraine. But after the trips, a new report by CNN revealed that Cosmos 2573, an elite spy satellite for Russia, was one of 14 Russian spacecraft tracking anyone flying over Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, days before a major Iranian attack there. It appears Russia has picked its side in the U.S.'s war with Iran, and it isn't Trump, or his close friends the Saudis. Instead, it seems Russia is the one feeding intelligence to Iran.

In a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, journalist and television host Dmytro Gordon asked Witkoff about the meetings with Putin. He didn't hold back.

"Don’t you think Putin has been lying to you all along?" asked Gordon. "Don’t you think that Putin, the Russians, and Russia understand only one language — the language of strength? And finally, aren’t you disgusted to sit at the same table with an international war criminal, a butcher of the Ukrainian people who is personally responsible for Ukraine’s tragedy?"

Witkoff gave a non-answer.

Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats thinks that the reason the administration is going back to the Ukraine/Russia war stems from their failure in Iran.

"Trump desperately wants to score some points somewhere before the midterms," Young said.

Finally, Young explained that CIA Director John Ratcliffe may take over negotiations since Kushner and Witkoff have failed in every respect. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s confidence over the war may not be based in reality. In fact, Young said, his theories about eventual victory may rest on exaggerated battlefield reports. Recent Ukrainian counterattacks near Lyman are an example.

Young closes by saying that Ukraine faces a difficult winter, but Russia’s assumed momentum and Trump’s diplomacy are far less formidable than they appear.

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough stopped the morning headlines read during the show Wednesday after a Bloomberg report revealed that President Donald Trump has made 28,700 stock trades up until the end of June.

“Wait! Wait a second. Can you say that again? I’m confused,” Scarborough asked.

“There’s 535 of them!” said John Heilemann, combining the House and Senate membership.

“Are you saying one person has made more – the guy constantly attacked Nancy Pelosi – her husband — [for] making stock trades. This person has made more stock trades than every member of Congress combined?” asked the former Republican congressman.

As co-host Mika Brzezinski read through the history, Scarborough chimed in, "That's not draining the swamp." It prompted a slight chuckle from his co-host.

Trump's stock trades compare with 22,000 trades from all of the members of the House and Senate. When Brzezinski read that Trump has made over 28,000 trades, Scarborough lamented, "Oh, come on."

Scarborough said that most Americans likely agree with him "that if you're in Congress, you should not be trading stock."

Republicans are pushing a "ban" on member stock trading, but it excludes the White House, earning Trump's wholehearted support.

Trump claimed, unironically, "lawmakers should not profit from insider information."

Scarborough asked Willie Geist how many times Trump has profited off of insider information.

Geist laughed, saying, "28,000 times."

"He'll invite people over to the White House. He'll talk about how great their company is, like after he's bought their stock," Scarborough said.

Geist noted that it isn't merely Trump; his family has benefited significantly. "And he's made more than $2 billion in this term since he arrived a year and a half ago."

Jonathan Lemire noted that it isn't merely Trump and his family; Howard Lutnick and his family continue to profit off of his public service. So have Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and her son. It equals "billions, at least," he said.

"I was doing some doing some math here as you were reading the story. I mean, it's 1,600 a month. It works out to nearly 60 stock trades a day every day since he has taken office. Sixty stock trades!" Lemire added.

It wasn't that long ago that President Donald Trump posted an AI photo of himself appearing as though he was a day-trader with several monitors on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

The Bulwark's publisher, Sarah Longwell, said that in her focus groups, corruption is among the top three most important issues to voters.

Ethics watchdogs called it a "volcano of corruption" under Trump's leadership.

Heilemann cited the recent New Yorker piece about Jared Kushner by Dexter Filkins.

He wrote that Kushner "represents a new kind of Washington figure, for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth. In the past two years, an array of people linked to the White House — including Witkoff’s sons, the cryptocurrency adviser David Sacks, and other members of the Trump family — have used their official positions to bring in billions of dollars for themselves."

One American official who served in the Middle East told Filkins, “I know all these guys. They go into these meetings, and they are doing business right alongside their diplomacy. ‘O.K., enough about the ceasefire. We have this hotel we want to build.’ That’s the kind of foreign policy America has now.”

Heilemann said that's what Trump's presidency is.

Axios founder Mike Allen said this is what Democrats will focus on if they regain control of Congress in the midterms.

A recent Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of Americans say "government corruption" is now widespread, and all parties agree.

The battle for the Kennedy Center continues, and George Conway fears he knows where this is headed.

After a court issued a definitive ruling that the memorial for former President John F. Kennedy could not feature President Donald Trump's name, the president's board "ruled" that it would officially close the building, citing "safety" concerns. And now Conway is sounding the alarm.

"It's pretty obvious where this is headed," Conway wrote on social media. "He's saying renovations are needed because the facility is unsafe. But the money for renovations isn't available unless his name goes on the building. Ergo, if his name doesn't go on the building and, as a result, it's not renovated, then it must be demolished for public-safety reasons."

It's a very real fear after Americans watched as Trump destroyed the East Wing of the White House.

Lawyer and Trump biographer Seth Abramson called the battle an extortion plot.

"Let’s be clear: this was a mafia-like MAGA hit on a congressionally controlled building honoring a slain Democratic [president]. The Kennedy Center was bureaucratically assassinated. The only chance it had to survive was to become Trump’s — and courts rightly rejected that extortion," he said on X.

Former War College professor Tom Nichols called it a downright "shakedown."

But the Washingtonian tried to calm fears, writing that the destruction of the East Wing made it clear to folks that they must be more prepared. Sylvie McNamara explained that this has been part of the plan from the start. "The government has been laying groundwork to walk away from the renovations for some time."

McNamara sought to answer whether Trump could truly bulldoze the Kennedy Center. "Not legally, no — which is not to say they wouldn’t tear it down anyway. But so far, demolition of the Kennedy Center appears to be more of a rhetorical cudgel than an actual plan. The judge, for instance, has not engaged with it as a serious threat."

The East Wing is the clear example, she agreed. However, Georgetown University Law School Professor David Super explained, "The administration tore it down before anyone could sue. By contrast, multiple lawsuits have already been filed to protect the Kennedy Center from various harms."

So, if Trump brought in the cranes and wrecking balls, "litigants could immediately get a restraining order from the court without having to prove that they have standing."

“Given how this case has progressed, I’m guessing that the court would be ready to act very, very quickly,” Super told McNamara.

The next steps in the case will be about whether the Kennedy Center can legitimately file for bankruptcy. While there might be a court for people or corporations, there isn't one for the federal government, particularly when Congress has already allocated funding to make repairs and continue supporting it.

What Congress did that was unique in their "One Big Beautiful Bill" was to allocate funding and then make it optional to spend.

"With programs like Medicaid and Head Start, for example, the government is legally required to fund them (though there’s been some difficulty lately surrounding both). But money for federal disaster relief is not required to be spent if there’s no disaster to address," the report explained.

Super said that the Kennedy Center’s founding statute doesn't mandate money be spent on basic projects like maintenance. Congress can change that, but under GOP control, the leadership isn't likely to allow it.

Former CIA officer and FBI agent Phil Mudd said that the FBI director is walking a fine line between the demands of President Donald Trump and those who work under him.

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared before the Senate on Tuesday, where he engaged in a number of truly bizarre conversations about crimes that confused even Republican lawmakers.

But one key point turned back to the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump during the 2024 election in Butler, Pennsylvania. Patel seemed off-message from the president's claims on Truth Social.

"Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA," Trump posted a little before lunch EST on Tuesday. "By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said. GOD BLESS AMERICA — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

What Trump said was far off from what Patel answered to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As CNN co-host Boris Sanchez explained, Patel "reiterated there was no evidence that the man who tried to shoot President Trump, then candidate Trump, was working with anyone."

It prompted Sanchez to question why Trump is now saying that the former FBI director should "pay a price." Trump has been going after former FBI Director James Comey personally, but Wray was Trump's own hand-picked nominee for the post.

"Well, I think the FBI director is walking a fine line. I assume the president is watching at least some of this testimony, looking for evidence that the FBI director is not repeating what the president has said," Mudd suspected.

"But there's a simple story here, Boris, and that is a lot of people worked on that investigation," Mudd continued. "That is not only investigators and agents, that is a lot of analysts, that is a lot of state and local police officers. There's other agencies, for example, Homeland Security, Secret Service is involved. You multiply that investigation out by hundreds of people."

Mudd said that Patel runs the risk of being trashed by those working for him if he lies that no law enforcement work was done.

"If Patel gets out there and starts to say things that the investigation didn't uncover, he's going to get undercut by the organization," the ex-agent said. "So when he's talking about what the facts say, that's not only the facts, that's the people who worked on it who will speak if he says something that violates what they know about the facts. The president says one thing, but Patel has to pay attention to what the workforce is saying."

Drive-time talk-radio hosts Nick Kayal and Dawn Stensland are begging a Republican candidate to either stop coming on their station or stop saying things that make her look worse to voters.

During their Monday morning show, conservatives Kayal and Stensland, along with ex-Green Party candidate Greg Stoker, complained about the political ads popping up during football games across Pennsylvania, the state's Democratic Party flagged on X.

Stacy Garrity, who is running a long-shot race against popular Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, is a frequent guest of 1210 AM WPHT out of Philadelphia. But it appears she's not quite up to speed on the key issues that Americans care about just 49 days before the election.

Speaking to Dom Giordano, Garrity was asked in August about Flock cameras. She didn't know what they were, the clip showed.

“So, tell me what they are,” she responded.

The host was forced to explain them to her and why they're controversial. She then described the cameras as “another example of government overreach.”

By Monday, Aug. 31, she and the Pennsylvania Republican Party promoted her newfound position, WFMZ reported earlier this month.

“Flock cameras are everywhere. And Stacy Garrity wants to stop them,” the state GOP wrote on social media.

The problem is that it isn't the first time she's appeared confused about the issues.

In another interview last year, Garrity touted her love for AI data centers in rural Pennsylvania, saying that it meant more jobs.

"What perfect places to put data centers," she championed.

Now that there is public backlash, she's evolving, NPR reported, agreeing that a "pause" might be necessary, so that communities can "get their zoning right."

It appears to be a main reason that conservatives are urging her to stay away from the cameras and microphones for a while.

"Can I give a little piece of advice to the Stacey Garrity campaign. Maybe stop coming on 1210 WPHT," the morning show hosts said. "Because every interview you do with Dawn Stensland, Rich Zeoli—"

"Shapiro clips it!" a co-host piped up.

"Shapiro clips it and uses it against you!" his colleague agreed.

"At least they tag us properly," another chimed in.

"So, maybe, maybe stop coming on our radio station or stop saying dumb things," a co-host said.

"You know, Shapiro actually cites our station properly," they went on, blasting Fox News for only calling Zeoli "radio host." They noted that in Shapiro's commercials, the conservative talk-show hosts were properly labeled.

For the man who associates himself with wealth and opulence, the president has lost $300 million in the past year.

According to a Tuesday Forbes report, the billionaire has fallen in his ranking among other billionaires, and he now ranks 245th on the list of the Forbes 400 richest people. That $300 million made him drop 44 places.

The report believes the drop reflects declining enthusiasm among everyday investors for Trump-branded public stocks and cryptocurrency projects that surged after his 2024 presidential victory.

His biggest losses from Sept. 2025 to this month come from his Trump Media company, the parent company of its flagship Truth Social. Trump announced a new program that would allow investors to pay between $60,000 and $100,000 per month to access his posts earlier than anyone else. Still, the company lost nearly $1 billion in value over the last year

Meanwhile, Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin dropped about 70 percent, erasing an estimated $530 million in value, Forbes calculated. Tokens connected to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture associated with the Trump family, fell about 75 percent, reducing Trump’s estimated holdings by another $260 million. That company is now working to become a bank.

Many of the losses stem from the decline of Trump's personal and political brand. Trump Media was once valued at about $5 billion despite heavy losses early on. World Liberty Financial sold more than $1 billion in tokens in 2025. The $TRUMP memecoin also generated enough buying interest to give Trump an estimated $710 million worth of tokens at its peak. But as Forbes says, some supporters and retail investors are becoming disillusioned with Trump, his issues, his businesses, the war in Iran, and the connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

Canadian worship leader Chad Nedohin, a former Trump Media investor, scoffed, “Nothing he says is true. His only concern in his life is his own wealth and status."

He and others are walking away, and Trump Media shares dropped about 50 percent. Trump's stake in the business lost about $1 billion.

World Liberty Financial reportedly sold nearly $2 billion in tokens and equity last year, with Forbes estimating that almost $800 million went to Trump. The memecoin was then able to generate another $600 million-plus from token sales and trading fees. After taxes, Forbes estimates Trump was able to make up some of his losses with liquid assets, which rose from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion.

"He would have fallen even harder if he hadn’t braced himself," the report said.

Forbes noted that another buffer from Trump comes from the hefty price tag he charges for influence. His private country clubs were up about 21 percent from the previous year, and Mar-a-Lago specifically has an increased profit of 63 percent. Altogether, Trump's country club portfolio makes up about $1.8 billion of his wealth.

A former waitress at the club describes it as a kind of zoo exhibit or circus performance.

“When he comes out of his room, everybody stands,” says former Mar-a-Lago waitress Liz Fletcher. “They stand clapping until he sits down. And they just kind of fawn over him. And then the members will have their guests, so they have their phones, they’re taking pictures because they’re like, ‘Wow, we’re seeing him in real life.’”

The challenge for Trump moving forward, the report said, is "figuring out how to hang onto all the money the presidency has provided."

How do you solve a problem like Ken Paxton? It's a question that The Hill's politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, can't help but mock as entirely of the GOP's own making.

For the first time in decades, a Texas U.S. Senate seat could go blue because the candidate is so uniquely flawed that even Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned his party it wasn't a smart move.

Stirewalt quoted the adage that success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.

"If Paxton really does manage to lose his Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, naming the father of what would be an epochal defeat for Texas Republicans will be a Maury Povich-level meltdown," he said.

Stirewalt described the baggage Paxton drags with him as enough "to fill the cargo hold of the Titanic."

The Texas Republican Party just dropped $54 million in an effort to save Paxton's faltering campaign, campaign finance records show. It's the largest independent expenditure in the 2026 campaign cycle thus far.

It doesn't only come from the GOP's desperation; it comes as a direct result of what Cornyn called a "lazy" candidate.

“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Texas Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it — we are where we are.”

In fact, Paxton spent a key campaigning time, July Fourth weekend, in Iceland and London with his mistress-turned-girlfriend.

So, it isn't surprising that Stirewalt places the blame at Paxton's feet if he loses. After all, he said, Paxton "brings the verve and energy of a coroner’s inquest to the campaign trail."

Still, Stirewalt said that Cornyn is to blame as he enjoys "his I-told-you-so moment." Stirewalt thinks that if the two men came together in a joint effort after the bloody primary, Cornyn could be out there saving Paxton's skin.

Both Paxton and President Donald Trump made that fairly difficult by turning Cornyn into an enemy, however. Still, Stirewalt includes Cornyn in those who will bear the blame for focusing on Senate races other than Paxton's.

Stirewalt assumes that Paxton's pride got in the way of even asking Cornyn for his endorsement and his help.

The other person to blame, he said, is the president, who picked Paxton over Cornyn in the primary.

Now that he's in the general election, Paxton's close association with the president will only make things worse, even in ruby red Texas. Trump continues to lose ground with independent voters, but now it appears he's dropping with Republicans too, who believed him when he promised "no more wars."

Currently, that war is driving up costs for groceries and gas. The only solution came during his 2026 convention, which Stirewalt called an outright "infomercial for Paxton": Trump's pledge to deliver $5,000 checks to Americans if they ensured Republicans kept the House and Senate.

Trump made the same promise for the DOGE cuts, which were supposed to hit bank accounts in February. It never happened. Trump's $2,000 tariff rebate is another that didn't appear. Trump even promised a $500 rebate check, saying that the Affordable Care Act Americans were overcharged and he'd make it right. Thus far, none of those checks have arrived, adding to Trump's total of $12,500 he hasn't paid Americans but promised.

Even his pledge of support for Paxton was lackluster. It was akin to a roast where he blasted Paxton as dressing poorly and not knowing how to speak in public.

"He got a massive cash infusion and a new persona from Trump as a kind of pitiful figure, which is an improvement over his conventional image as calculating and aloof," wrote Stirewalt.

Still, if Paxton loses, "he will mostly have himself to blame."

President Donald Trump's online meltdowns are only making the 2026 midterm elections more complicated for Republicans desperate to distance themselves from the president's bad policies.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke with MS NOW's James Downie on Tuesday's episode of "The Daily Blast" about the president's knack for downplaying very real concerns Americans have.

Over the past two years, Trump has repeatedly minimized or dismissed risks if they conflict with his personal beliefs or his political agenda. Chief among them is that Trump continues to ignore Americans' complaints about the affordability crisis and inflation by calling it a "hoax." Another is the fear that Americans have over artificial intelligence and data centers.

Trump is promoting AI as something new and exciting for a future he won't likely see. Meanwhile, Americans are worried about their jobs, water and electricity use that raises their own costs, and a complete loss of human control over the systems. Over the past several weeks, AI experts have sounded the alarm that AI could end humanity either through rogue agents, intentional biological misuse, or by continuing to grow so powerful that it advances faster than can be controlled.

But as with the climate crisis, the housing crisis, Russia's attack on the 2016 election, political violence and extremism and the 2020 election, Trump says they're all a hoax, including concerns about AI. This time, however, it's an issue that Americans have already made up their minds about before he weighed in.

"There’s almost nothing that polls as poorly, in particular, as data centers — AI in general. There’s a ton of concerns among voters about what that’s going to do to their jobs, what that’s going to do to education, what that’s going to do to society writ large," said Downie. "And then, especially drilling down on it, the data centers that AI companies are depending on are extremely unpopular almost across the board."

This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), generally regarded as being a member of the far left, will meet with far-right commentator Steve Bannon for a discussion on the issue. It isn't merely the left and the right, Downie explained. Every part of politics is coming together against the issue. Meanwhile, Trump is calling people dumb if they don't support it.

Sargent called the anti-data center a "really serious outpouring of genuine political energy that we haven’t seen in some time.”

But there's a key reason that Trump is so supportive of AI, Downie explained.

"His family is invested in AI companies; his sons are invested in that. And as we saw with crypto, for example, Trump went from saying crypto’s a scam to 'I love crypto' as soon as he got invested in it — as soon as his family had invested. Like, that’s the first thing," said Downie.

He compared it to the trade war with Canada, where an incredibly complicated issue is being turned into this "black and white" world of "winning and losing" when it's far more nuanced.

"Trump — as soon as he hears that frame, he’s totally trapped in it," Downie said. "And he can’t break it. It doesn’t matter, even if it’s the apocalypse. Hey, we’re the first ones to cause the apocalypse. Isn’t that great?"

Sargent agreed, saying, “The leader of the Republican Party is basically saying, 'We don’t have to do anything. Don’t do anything.”

The two linked the failures on these issues to the idea that Trump behaves like he doesn't really even want to win the election.

"Trump will only allow Republicans to make a case for sticking with Republican rule on terms that flatter him. And that’s just sort of, like, the through line here. And it’s like, you know, you’re really stuck with this narcissist now. Tough shit, man. Like, you made this bed," said Sargent.

Downie said that for those who aren't part of the MAGA "cult" question what they expected would happen.

"Everything has to flatter the president. And you have a president who — I mean, as rough as the economy is, and as unhappy as Americans are with the economy," Downie said. "And yet this president is already in the 35, 36 percent approval rating. That takes real work, to get to that level in this economy. And he seems to be just pushing every button he can to make things as bad as possible for the Republicans."

Sargent agreed, noting that it seems "Trump doesn’t want Republicans to win the midterms if it’s done on terms that make him look bad."

The New York Times reported Monday that federal agents may have broken state laws when the Department of Homeland Security ordered them to use private information to access voter records in state databases.

President Donald Trump's effort to find noncitizens on state voter rolls may be relying on questionable data, rushed reviews and even investigative practices that could have violated local state law.

The “Unlawful Voter Initiative” is a Trump administration operation that has reportedly deployed hundreds of federal agents to search voter-registration records for evidence that noncitizens are voting in mass numbers. It was exposed in a New York Times report last month, in which the whistleblower alleged that hundreds of federal agents have been ordered to sift through voter rolls in a widespread hunt to find voter fraud.

“This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (R-N.Y.) said in an interview.

“We’ve never seen anything quite like this. They come up with so many different ways to try and steal the election, to try and jaundice the election, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this. Department of Homeland Security is actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they’re supposed to do," he added.

Democratic senators sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding that the operation be stopped while they seek answers. The whistleblower said that agents are required to complete at least 40 reviews in eight hours, giving them little time to search each voter's citizenship and voting history.

Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor sounded the alarm Monday in a column, saying that the software used to control a national voter database hands any hacker the key to flip a switch and nullify voters' eligibility to cast a ballot and have it counted.

One of the pieces of information revealed by the whistleblower is that the federal agents are looking through personally identifiable information that comes from both internal government information as well as external sources, including things like birth dates and even partial Social Security numbers while they're searching through records.

The whistleblower questioned whether it's legal.

"The agents plugged those names and personal data into public-facing state websites to find a subject’s voter history," the report said. "Some states, such as Virginia, declare explicitly that only individual voters may use the search tool to look up their own records. Others, such as California, require specific information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number in an effort to limit the use of the tool to individuals."

It's one of the reasons that the whistleblower said that they flagged it for those leading the investigation within Homeland Security's Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate. They were told that agents could use the database for operations in the voter search initiative. "Yet leadership appeared to acknowledge the potential for legal liability..." the report said.

The leadership told the whistleblower that agents “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented.”

“This statement suggests that there may be legal implications for accessing these websites,” said a report produced by the government watchdog group Democracy Defenders Fund. They have been working with the whistleblower and providing them with legal representation. “Yet they are still requiring officers to engage in this illegal activity with promises of personal liability protection.”

Former officials in President Donald Trump's administration have been caught by the court deleting messages and potentially relevant evidence despite ongoing court cases and an order to retain documents.

Daily Beast correspondent Tom Latchem noticed the filing that popped up on Sept. 11, showing that at least two former Homeland Security officials deleted information.

Former Secretary Kristi Noem's top staffer, Karen Evans, served as "one of the ousted Department of Homeland Security chief’s most trusted aides," the report claimed. After she was told to retain information, including Signal chats, she "intentionally destroyed" those messages.

Judge Susan Illston wrote in a court filing that Evans, a former acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leader, acted with “intent to deprive” plaintiffs of the information requested in the case.

"Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)(2), plaintiffs are therefore entitled to a presumption that the information lost was unfavorable to defendants," the judge said.

"Evans should have known better," the judge blasted. "She previously served as Chief Information Officer at DHS, in charge of the agency’s records preservation policies. At a hearing on this litigation, her personal attorney touted that 'she is more so an expert” on Signal “than anybody else here[.]'"

Evans created the Signal chat that would likely have been "highly relevant" to the case, but she set her messages to auto-delete in four weeks, according to a message in the chat.

"On March 11, 2026, after she had been named as a defendant in this case and with plaintiffs’ emergency motion pending, Evans shortened the auto-delete timer on one of her FEMA Signal chats. And it wasn’t until April 25, 2026, that Evans created a back-up of her Signal messages, by which point the most timely messages were long since deleted," the judge explained.

She wasn't the only one. Joseph Guy, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deputy chief of staff also didn't produce any Signal messages from his phone, the judge said, despite having at least 26 FEMA-related Signal chats on his personal phone.

"While he was under a Court order to search his personal phone for relevant Signal messages, Guy — without consulting anyone, apparently — reinstalled the Signal app, thereby wiping all of his Signal message content. The day before he wiped his Signal app, Guy was supposed to have filed a declaration with the Court about preserving his records. But he missed the deadline. When he filed his declaration — literally a day late and metaphorically a dollar short—he said that none of his relevant Signal chats had been preserved," the judge wrote.

Guy claimed after the fact that he thought someone else was preserving the documents. The judge didn't buy it.

This "makes little sense and does not salvage his actions," she wrote.

Kara Voorhies, the senior advisor to the DHS secretary on FEMA issues, turned over a considerable amount of information indicating that both Guy and Evans were communicating on Signal.

"Evans created the FEMA 2.0 at the start of the relevant time period to this case, invited two of the stakeholders (Guy and Voorhies) who appear most critical to the FEMA claims in this lawsuit, and then set the Signal chat to auto-delete after four weeks. Accordingly, the Court concludes plaintiffs have shown by a preponderance of the evidence that FEMA 2.0 Signal chat messages were deleted and that those messages would have been relevant to plaintiffs’ claims," the judge said

Despite finding “that evidence demonstrates, at worst, negligence or perhaps gross negligence,” the judge refused to issue sanctions or any consequences for Guy or Evans. She even goes on to cite specific examples saying in at least one case, "here, the conduct goes beyond gross negligence."

An exclusive Talking Points Memo investigation by Christopher Mathias reports that a Republican candidate for House District 10 in Florida was photographed marching with white supremacists at the infamous Charlottesville, Virginia, rally that left one woman dead and 35 injured.

Marshall Rawson attended the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally alongside members of the League of the South, which is a white nationalist, neo-Confederate organization.

TPM spotted Rawson and his wife arriving at the rally in archived video footage. They're greeted by fellow members of the League. Footage and photographs reviewed by the outlet reportedly place him carrying a League of the South flag and marching with neo-Nazis, including James Alex Fields Jr. He was the man who later killed counterprotester Heather Heyer by driving his car into a crowd of people.

Rawson has never denounced the League of the South, apologized for his participation in the violent rally or spoken out against many of the people he marched with.

The League has a documented history of white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-immigrant, homophobic and secessionist advocacy, and its leaders have openly promoted the idea of a white ethnostate in the South, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's database of hate groups.

TPM cited a 2025 Facebook post in which Rowson claimed, “I am happy to talk about my past advocacy and activism on any issue. I am also proud of the advocacy work that I have been involved with for the past 13 years.”

Rawson's ideology is a close match to the League's values, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ people. A 2023 statement from him, cited by TPM, expressed his support for the death penalty for gay people in Uganda.

“This is how you would run the pervs and miscreants out of Florida," he said.

“A one-way ticket to no more sexualizing of children and the LGBTQ+ agenda in Florida!” he added.

The investigation by TPM alleged that "there are indications Rawson may have still felt the need to operate a pseudonymous social media account where he could express even more extreme sentiments. There are several data points linking an X account that posted from 2017 to 2020 under the handle 'RockOfDixie' to Rawson. Some of the posts from this account compiled by researcher ShermanMarching seem to have since been deleted, and the account’s most recent post is from 2020."

The account "features a bodybuilder flexing on stage," which is the same image in an online gallery of photos from the 2016 National Physique Committee’s Galaxy Championships. The researcher found that the bodybuilder in the image was identified at that time as Marshall Rawson. He finished fourth out of six.

One of the policies he advocated for is to bring back lynchings.

“Multiculturalism kills and public lynchings worked," said the "RockOfDixie" account.

Fellow League of the South members have opened their checkbooks in support, TPM found. So far, he's received more than $15,000 from dozens of people the report said are tied to the League of the South, neo-Nazi circles, white nationalist groups or other extremist activism.

One of the donors is a former Klan lawyer, and others also attended the Charlottesville riot. When asked about it, Rawson said he doesn't "screen" his donors or their views before he takes their money.

Rawson won the August Republican primary by just over 2,000 votes and is widely expected to win the November general election in the heavily conservative district. TPM argues that his candidacy illustrates how ideas once associated with fringe white-nationalist groups have gained a greater foothold within Republican politics.

Neither the Florida GOP nor the national Republican Party responded to TPM’s requests for comment.

President Donald Trump's Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, was so triggered by the traditional financial media that he's shutting some of them out and opting for friendlier conservative media, like a promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory instead.

Semafor wrote on Monday that Bloomberg News reported that Bessent appears to have two homes he called his "principal residences." Bessent has denied the allegations. The allegation was politically awkward because the administration had cited a similar alleged “principal residence” issue in its effort to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

Bloomberg ran with the story, despite Bessent's threats to box them out of the Treasury.

"The secretary stopped appearing on Bloomberg Television. Some of its reporters privately complain that they no longer receive certain press releases with key financial information. Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal journalists were also denied credentials to join Bessent at a G20 meeting of financial leaders in Asheville, North Carolina, earlier this month; a Times reporter was also denied credentials, though another was included among some 300 reporters credentialed," Semafor reported.

Meanwhile, when Bessent went to Ukraine in February 2025 he brought Jack Posobiec, a Pizzagate figure, instead.

Semafor called the press relationship with Bessent "tense." It's coming at a time that "high interest rates remain front-page news — and so-called bond vigilantes test Treasury’s credibility — critical headlines in financial and business publications have frustrated a secretary who didn’t spend his career seeking the public eye, and doesn’t seem to think all those who cover him are up to the job."

Now Bessent is lashing out against the Financial Times after one of its reports and blasted the Wall Street Journal's "well-regarded chief economic correspondent." He has "iced out journalists" and complained to others about what he perceives as unfair coverage.

Something similar happened under the Department of Defense, when Secretary Pete Hegseth gave frequent briefings about the Iran war at its outset. Hegseth stopped giving them after some difficult questions about military casualties, operational decisions and internal Pentagon drama. The Pentagon also blocked several photographers after unflattering shots of him were taken. The last formal Pentagon briefing was on May 5.

The Treasury Department claimed in a comment to Semafor that the press hasn't been shut out, the issue is really "plane retrofitting and assignment logistics."

Meanwhile, Bessent appears to be speaking predominantly to streaming sites like "Right Side Broadcasting," Steve Bannon, and Fox News rather than to the big financial news sites or channels.

Semafor editor Max Tani, "hostile relationship between the news media and the Treasury secretary could pose a real risk if the US finds itself in an economic crisis. I’m not so sure: In significant news moments, journalists and newsmakers frequently set aside grievances to get information out there. But Bessent’s frustration with the media seems to mirror his frustration with the markets and Bloomberg-addicted traders: Neither, it seems, will do as he instructs."