President Donald Trump’s coalition is “falling apart,” according to columnist Matt K. Lewis, who writes at The Hill that Trump’s list of accomplishments seems more like “a cry for help.”

Pointing to Trump’s rapid subject-changing, Lewis noted that the president kicked off the new year by invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.

“From there, things escalated briskly,” he wrote. “He defended an ICE agent who shot and killed a protester in Minneapolis named Renee Good. He threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. He threatened to take Greenland — possibly by force. He threatened to slap tariffs on European allies over Greenland. He suggested his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize justified taking Greenland. And he almost failed to issue any acknowledgment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, waiting until bedtime to do so.”

Lewis says that while somewhere there is a “constituency” for each of these individual actions, “taken together, they resemble a blitzkrieg against public opinion.”

He summed up Trump’s low poll numbers and concluded, “America has seen this movie before, has been reminded of how it ends, and is already edging toward the exit.”

So, if the 2024 election held today, it’s “not at all clear” that Trump would win. he said, in part because “Trump’s winning coalition was so sprawling and incoherent that pleasing one group would automatically enrage another.”

So what’s happened in the past year?

“Trump is very good at campaigning and very bad at governing. This explains almost everything that has happened since he took office one year ago this week, including the nation’s rising consumption of Rolaids.”

Disappointment from the “newer members of his coalition” came from “the ultimate realization that Trump’s most electorally appealing promises — such as lowering grocery prices on day one — are never actually going to happen. Indeed, Trump’s policies — tariffs, for example — were almost custom-made to increase grocery prices, which is generally frowned upon by people who eat.”

As it turns out, “Trump’s true superpower … only works when he is not actually in charge.”

When it comes to becoming part of the Trump regime, there’s been only one litmus test, at least until now: total loyalty to Trump. Pass that test and nothing else matters.

But Senate Republicans have now set a limit to how low Trump loyalists can go if they want to be confirmed.

At least five Senate Republicans just opposed the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel — enough to block his confirmation.

Ingrassia was among Trump Republican operatives who have been exposed exchanging racist, sexist, Nazi-loving text messages — calling Black people “monkeys” and “watermelon people,” talking about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide, lauding Republicans who they believe support slavery, imagining putting political opponents into gas chambers and subjecting them to “the greatest physiological torture methods known to man,” calling rape “epic,” and writing “I love Hitler.”

JD Vance brushed off the messages: “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

Jokes? Not funny.

Kids? Members of the group range from 18 to 40. One is a state legislator. Others are in their 30s and well-established in Republican politics.

Ingrassia, age 30, is now the Department of Homeland Security’s liaison to Vance and Trump’s White House.

In his text messages, Ingrassia described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggests Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.”

But because of his utter loyalty to Trump, Trump nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower complaints and allegations of political interference in the civil service.

Vance has responded quite differently toward anyone making negative comments about the late Charlie Kirk.

“Call them out,” Vance angrily demanded, “and hell, call their employer.”

Many who have expressed critical views about Kirk have now lost their jobs.

At least 21 teachers in school districts across the country have been fired, put on administrative leave, or placed under investigation by their employers for comments allegedly critical of Kirk. Firefighters, members of the military, a sports reporter, an employee of the Carolina Panthers, and a city council official in Indiana have faced similar treatment or calls to resign.

The State Department has even revoked visas of foreign nationals who have made slightly negative comments about Kirk on social media, including banal statements such as “Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero.”

Senate Republicans apparently don’t share Vance’s hypocritical tolerance for racist, sexist, and Nazi-loving comments by people Trump wants to confirm for positions in his regime.

Unlike Vance and the GOP operatives who feel that their loyalty to Trump allows them to promote the sickest and most hateful views imaginable, Senate Republicans have a bottom below which they won’t sink.

It’s low but, hey, it’s a bottom.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Speaking to several federal workers, Wired revealed that the Department of Agriculture, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services have all ramped up references to religion.

According to one person at the Department of Labor, the new focus on religion left a bad taste. “The vibes are bad, and people don’t like it."

“They always spend a lot of time carrying on like, ‘No one's forcing you to pray, these are voluntary,’” the employee told Wired. “But it's happening in the middle of a government workplace.”

They were particularly concerned about Alveda King, niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She manages faith and community outreach at the USDA.

In January, King made comments about atheists and nonreligious people, saying they were going to Hell.

“We have different denominations, different faiths, and some have no faith — and those are the ones I would be more concerned about. If someone is totally without hope, can’t believe in anything, think the world is just falling apart, then that’s when we want justice to stand. And you bring justice every day you come to work," King told staff.

An employee told Wired, “People are uncomfortable. I know several who are offended and angry. These [worship services] are very Christian in nature.”

“I've thought about complaining, but I would worry about some form of retaliation if I were to do that, to be honest,” an employee at the Department of Labor said.

The Small Business Administration launched a Fellowship Prayer Service in March, something that staff there found "weird" and "uncomfortable."

“Honestly, I don’t know anyone who actually went to them because they are optional but it’s still uncomfortable to know that there’s a Christian prayer service happening in a government building, which is supposed to be religiously neutral," said the SBA employee.

A spokesperson for the DOL made it clear that the events are voluntary and that the service was nondenominational.

However, it has been clear to non-Protestant Christians that they aren't part of the services. On Good Friday, the Pentagon sent an email about a service and specifically called out Catholics, saying there would be no Mass. Catholics don't typically have a Mass on Good Friday.

“I guess so the Catholics know their kind ain’t welcome,” an employee, who requested anonymity, told the Huffington Post. “It’s so ridiculous.”

The Pentagon confirmed to HuffPo that there was no additional service for Catholics.

“The Protestant service is the only service scheduled in the Pentagon chapel today,” they said in a statement.

The report noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, "a far-right evangelical Christian, has tried to infuse his religious views into Pentagon activities."

He has openly hailed President Donald Trump as divinely appointed. The report came a week before Trump posted an AI image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Trump claimed he thought it was a "doctor."

Even Trump's own allies questioned the move, with one far-right pastor questioning if Trump was the anti-Christ.

Meanwhile, Trump has been in his own war of words with Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope. It has played into anti-Catholic sentiment, one historian explained.

Wired cited recent data from 2025 showing that only 22.5 percent of federal workers feel safe reporting wrongdoing without fear of retaliation from superiors. In 2024, that number was 71.9 percent.

“This has never happened before,” said a USDA employee, who, like others who spoke to Wired was too fearful to have their name disclosed publicly. The Ag. Department got an email from Secretary Brooke Rollins celebrating Jesus as "the greatest story ever told."

"I have never gotten a message like this from anyone," the employee said, noting that even military chaplains don't operate like this and it's part of their job.

Tomorrow we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

Trump has removed MLK Jr.’s birthday from the National Park Service’s fee-free days and substituted his own birthday of June 14 as a fee-free day.

I write this more in sorrow than in anger.

All told, I feel profound sorrow for America. Sorrow for the people of Minneapolis who are enduring this Trump-made hell. Sorrow for Renee Good’s three children and wife.

I also feel sorrow for Greenlanders and Venezuelans and others around the world fearing what the sociopath in the Oval Office may do next. Sorrow for everyone justifiably worried about the future of America and the planet because of him.

I’m old enough to remember when Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission seemed impossible. Just as the mission you and I must now engage in — defeating Trumpism and creating a new and better America out of the rubble and chaos he is wreaking — may seem impossible at this moment.

Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more than anyone thought he could when he began. He did it with patience and perseverance, with the strength of conviction. He did it with calmness, reason, and quiet passion.

And he did it with civil disobedience — what one of his assistants, the late great congressman John Lewis, called “good trouble.”

Good trouble meant mobilizing the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone saw its horrors. Night after night on the news — watching peaceful civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists.

I remember watching Bull Connor, commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, and his goons use firehoses and attack dogs against Black people — including children — who were peacefully standing up for their rights.

The scenes horrified America and much of the world. Yet were it not for our painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

I’ve been thinking of those scenes as I’ve watched ICE thugs patrolling Minneapolis. Watched armed agents pulling people out of cars, using chokeholds, demanding proof of citizenship. Masked agents in unmarked vehicles grabbing neighbors off the streets, using tear gas and pepper spray, shooting innocent people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest.

This time it isn’t Bull Connor and his racist goons. It’s Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, and their fascist goons. It’s armed agents of the president of the United States who are bullying and brutalizing people. Committing a cold-blooded murder of a middle-class white woman in broad daylight who tried to get out of their way. Shooting and injuring others.

This time it’s Trump and the thugs around him making up stories to justify this brutality, lying about the protester’s motives, and threatening even more brutality.

Take a wider look and you see their lawless bullying on a different scale: a criminal investigation of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for failing to lower interest rates as fast as Trump wants. Criminal investigations of U.S. senators and representatives for telling America’s soldiers that they don’t have to follow illegal orders. Criminal investigations of the governor of Minnesota and mayor of Minneapolis for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s brown shirts.

The Justice Department searching the home of a Washington Post reporter and seizing her laptops and other devices.

Trump raising tariffs on our trusted allies — until and unless they support him in taking over Greenland. Greenland!

A crazy old man saying “f--- you, f--- you” and giving the finger to an American factory worker who criticizes him in public. The crazy old man is president of the United States, and the worker has lost his job because he dared criticize that crazy old man.

I remember the good trouble that occurred 65 years ago. I believe it’s time for it again. Time for all of us — every one of us — to cause it.

What kind of good trouble?

A huge national demonstration, far larger than anything before. Everyone in the streets.

A giant general strike where we stop purchasing all products for two weeks (stocking up beforehand).

A massive boycott of all businesses sucking up to Trump.

A coordinated effort to get all our employers, our churches and synagogues, our unions, our universities to condemn this madness.

A loud demand that our members of Congress impeach and convict him of his high crimes.

There is no longer any neutral place to stand. Either you’re standing up for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice, or you’re complicit in the fascist mayhem Trump has unleashed.

That, for me, is the lesson of all this.

Trump and his thugs have brought us to this point. They are the Bull Connors of today.

We stand with the people of Minneapolis and with the people of every other town and city where Trump’s thugs are prowling or will prowl, and where people are resisting.

We stand with the citizens of Greenland and Venezuela. With Canadians and Europeans. With every nation now threatened by Trump’s lawless abuses of power.

We stand proudly and sturdily everywhere the bright lights of freedom and truth still shine.

We will overcome the darkness of Trump’s fascism. We reject the hate, the bigotry, the fear, and the murderous lawlessness of his regime. We dedicate ourselves to causing good trouble -- ending this mayhem, and building a new and better America.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Christopher Columbus is back. At least, a statue of him is back, reinstalled by US President Donald Trump on the White House grounds in late March – part of the president’s stated mission to cancel “cancel culture”.

The resurrection of Columbus made good on Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.

The statue is in fact a replica of the original thrown into Baltimore Harbor by protesters on Independence Day 2020 during the Black Lives Matter upheavals of the first Trump presidency.

The protests targeted monuments “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers”. But damaged pieces of the Columbus statue were later salvaged and became a model for the copy.

Trump has since championed Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”.

He might have chosen any statue of the explorer and navigator from Genoa who pioneered European colonisation of the Americas. But clearly reinstating one removed by his opponents sends a more powerful message.

‘Improper partisan ideology’

Restoring statues to their original location isn’t simply about undoing their previous removal. It’s designed to reverse what some see as attempts to “erase history”.

And it has a long history of its own. Roman emperors once feared being condemned to obscurity through “damnatio memoriae” – having their statues destroyed, coins melted down and names chiselled from the facades of buildings.

Trump’s executive order was very much about retaliating against those who want to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology”.

Relocating a memorial to a more prominent location – from Baltimore to the White House, for instance – goes one step further. It amplifies the significance of the historical figure and the symbolic restoration of their reputation.

But sometimes just restoring a statue to its original site is symbolism enough.

Statue of Albert Pike in Washington DC, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The memorial to Albert Pike, for example, was and is the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in Washington DC. Pulled down by protesters in 2020 and returned in 2025, its merits have long been debated.

Pike was a disgraced figure, accused of misappropriating funds and allowing his troops to desecrate the bodies of Union soldiers. There are also alleged ties to an early version of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the words of congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the Nation’s capital.”

Advocates for the statue’s retention note there is no mention of the Confederacy or depiction of a military uniform, only Pike’s contribution to the American Freemasons.

But when the statue was pulled down in 2020, Trump certainly took sides: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”

‘Woke lemmings’

Of course, history isn’t always simple, as memorialising the American Civil War shows.

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was established in 1864 as a national military cemetery, with a Confederate section dedicated in 1900 as part of the effort to promote reconciliation between the North and South.

Its Confederate Memorial (designed by a Confederate veteran) features a female figure representing the South holding symbols of peace. A bronze relief below depicts sanitised images of slavery: a woman caring for white children, and a man following his owner into battle as his servant.

A biblical quotation below preaches peace: “They have beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

But another quote in Latin – “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” – references Julius Caesar’s victory in the Roman civil war and casts the South’s defeat as a noble lost cause.

The monument was erected in 1914, removed by Congress in 2023, and is scheduled to return in 2027. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on social media it “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama addresses a rally before a statue of Caesar Rodney in Wilmington, Delaware, 2008. Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

Defiant choices

Similarly, an equestrian statue of Founding Father Caesar Rodney – installed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1923 and removed in 2020 to prevent damage by protesters – highlights these contested readings of history.

Rodney is famous for riding all night from Delaware to Philadelphia, through a thunderstorm, to break a deadlock and cast the deciding vote in favour of American independence in 1776.

But as well as being a brigadier general and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, he owned 200 slaves on his family’s plantation.

The statue is now scheduled to reappear for six months, this time in Washington DC, to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. It will be installed in Freedom Plaza, named in honour of Martin Luther King Junior.

Placing the contested statue of a famous slave owner in a space dedicated to a Black civil rights leader is a provocative, if not defiant, choice. And it shows again how powerful symbols and symbolic actions can be.

The argument that removing statues also erases history doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It conflates public visibility and symbolic placement with actual knowledge of the past.

In that sense, reinstalling controversial memorials is, in itself, an attempt to rewrite history by erasing a more recent past and returning to an old, disputed status quo.

Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A few days ago I was approached on the street by someone I didn’t know. “Are you Robert Reich?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I just want you to know …” she began, and then burst into tears. I felt awful but couldn’t think what to say. Then, in a flash, she was gone.

I don’t know what she wanted me to know, but I do know that lots of people are weeping these days.

They’re weeping for family members who have been arrested and abducted by ICE. For children arrested and imprisoned, even if their own families haven’t been affected. For people murdered by ICE or Border Patrol.

Grieving the children now dying around the world because they no longer have medicines that America used to provide through USAID or because they’re starving in places of war or famine in which America is implicated.

Crying for our planet being destroyed because Trump won’t adhere to the Paris Agreement and promotes oil and coal and kills subsidies for solar and wind.

In tears over the common decency that’s being demolished, as Trump reposts a video of the Obamas as apes, calls Somali-Americans “garbage,” and demands his name on an airport or train station in return for approving a vital transit project in New York.

Lamenting an America being sacked with impunity by billionaires like Jeff Bezos — handing Melania Trump $28 million while slashing The Washington Post’s newsroom and laying off thousands of Amazon workers, at the same time raking in billions of dollars more.

Or Elon Musk — planning AI data centers in space while his AI Grok floods X with sexually explicit images, and promising to flood American politics with more of his money.

And the shameless, wealthy, powerful men who abused young girls in Jeffrey Epstein’s island retreat and New York townhouse.

They’re sobbing because they’re sickened by what has happened to America.

Cry, our beloved country.

I understand the tears. I have wept, too.

But let’s not just weep.

As bleak as this era is, I hope you can also see in it an opportunity.

We could not have stayed on the road we were on even before Trump — toward widening inequality, a politics polluted by wealthy campaign donations and corporate super PACs, a market increasingly rigged by and for billionaires, an economy dominated by finance, and a climate collapsing.

So now we have an opportunity to begin the rebuilding America. A chance to reimagine what we can become and how we can live.

To commit ourselves to stopping the self-dealing, crony capitalism, and legalized bribery that have led us to where we are. Override Citizens United and get big money out of our politics. Prevent the oligarchy from monopolizing our economy, owning our media, and taking over America.

An opportunity to update our Constitution and our means of self-government. Abolish the Electoral College. Stop political and racial gerrymandering.

And never again allow a loathsome wannabe king to tyrannize America and the world.

In other words, my friends, now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the values enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and FDR’s first and second inaugural addresses.

A time to educate the next generation so they don’t make the same mistakes. To teach our children and our grandchildren what happened and why, and instill in them a passion for democracy and the rule of law.

To read them the poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Emma Lazarus’s “New Colossus” — which adorns the Statue of Liberty — and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Monument.

To celebrate the courage of generations of American soldiers, the selflessness of our teachers and social workers, and the kindness of people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Yes, weep for what we have lost. But don’t just weep. Turn these losses into a new beginning — based on what’s good in America and what has gone wrong.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Editor's Note: Rev. Jesse Jackson, the legendary civil rights activist and two-time presidential candidate who fundamentally reshaped American politics and inspired generations of African Americans to seek elected office, has died. He was 83.

Jackson's passing marks the end of an era in American political and social history. From his emergence as a leader in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s to his groundbreaking presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, Jackson's life was defined by an unwavering commitment to social and economic justice.

The article that follows, originally published by The Conversation last year, examines how Jackson's Southern identity shaped his life's work and his enduring influence on American politics. It is reprinted here as a tribute to his legacy.

Holding hands with other prominent Black leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 9, 2025, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” Like several survivors of that violent day in 1965, when police brutally attacked civil rights protesters, Jackson crossed the bridge in a wheelchair.

President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed dozens of rapid-fire social media posts after what critics described as a difficult few days at Davos. His speech there reportedly further strained relations with U.S. allies, following his Greenland gambit, which produced few if any clear gains and drew criticism over its diplomatic costs. The rollout of Trump’s Board of Peace also struggled to gain traction, with a handful of European allies participating in the inaugural signing ceremony.

In spoke of the more recent posts, Trump went off on "Fake Polls," while admitting that they have his approval rating "in the low 40s," although The Economist shows his net approval rating currently at 37%.

"We have the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, we have the Strongest Border in History, nobody has ever done a job like I have done, and they have me in the low 40s," he complained. "The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.

"The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times," he wrote. "Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they 'computed' these fake results — Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!"

Some posts promoted questionable claims, including suggesting that annualized U.S. GDP grew to more than 5 percent — while most expectations and Congressional Budget Office predictions are currently about half that number.

He promoted a claim that he "helped create 'The Martin Luther King Jr International Freedom Games' in 1966," when he would have been about 20 years old.

Other posts he promoted talked about the U.S. trade deficit, alleged illegal voting in the 2020 election, immigration, tariffs, globalism, Don Lemon, Supreme Court oral arguments for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and one declaring Trump the "greatest President in the world."

Another post offered the transcript and video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly claiming, and without evidence, that James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, and President Barack Obama "all conspired and worked together to sabotage, undermine, unravel, and overthrow the United States government and the democratic institutions and structures of this country."

That post, as Raw Story reported, appeared to be in response to former Special Counsel Jack Smith's currently ongoing congressional public testimony.

Another post included video of Argentinian President Javier Milei attacking "wokeism" while praising the "Americas."

President Donald Trump is deploying old-school tactics against some of his enemies: using FBI files to target them.

The New York Times reported Sunday morning that FBI Director Kash Patel is helping Trump target his foes using the information it has collected.

Now, the report said, "the bureau has added payback to its portfolio."

While Trump spent years alleging the “weaponization” of law enforcement against political foes, the new administration is “using federal law enforcement to carry out a partisan opposition research operation.”

The report said that Patel has been poring over files, trying to uncover documents that can “expose and discredit federal law enforcement officials who investigated Mr. Trump and his allies.”

The Times noted that it is currently unknown how “wide-ranging” Patel’s coordination with political appointees and Republican allies has been. The official overseeing the operation was Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, who recently left the FBI after a tumultuous year in the post. Internally, they referred to Bongino’s unit as the “director’s advisory team.”

Most of the focus has been on the investigation into the 2020 efforts to overturn the election and stage an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Former special counsel Jack Smith spoke to the House late last year about the findings of the probe and said he had "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that what Trump did was unlawful.

During Trump’s last administration, the IRS was used to go after former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

While President Joe Biden’s administration refused to turn over documents tied to the ongoing investigation, Patel is now claiming that Smith broke the law. Speaking to the House, Smith said that all of the information he gathered was approved by a federal judge, which will make it difficult to argue that he went rogue or violated the law with his probes.

J. Edgar Hoover ran his own operations while overseeing the FBI. Recently released information detailed the way in which the FBI was surveilling civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences detailed, the counterintelligence campaign against MLK involved "illegal wiretaps on his phone and bugging hotel rooms when he traveled."

The FBI also spread misinformation about King being an "immoral communist."

The Times reported that the FBI now claims it is the “most transparent in history,” even as it refuses to release the legally required files on the investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bureau has strategically released batches of anti-Smith material right before he testified behind closed doors.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who once cast himself as a champion of whistleblowers, is now helping funnel FBI leaks through his office. An unnamed FBI whistleblower, for example, alleged that one member of Jack Smith’s team was not “impartial.”

That agent, who no longer works at the FBI, is Walter Giardina, whom Trump has personally attacked for supposedly having “animosity” toward him. “Mr. Giardina vehemently denied those allegations in a meeting with bureau officials last July, two days after the funeral of his wife, who died of adrenal cancer at 49,” the report continued.

Lawyers representing FBI agents who have been fired under the Trump administration’s weaponization effort are calling out the double standard of using the government to attack someone for their politics while accusing others of doing the same. Those making the accusations are granted anonymity, allowing them to hide behind their own partisan protectors.

Read the full report here.