gmo ban

The Justice Department announced that it was a done deal that they are setting up a fund for President Donald Trump's allies who claim they have been "wronged" by former President Joe Biden's administration.

The decision was signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The Justice Department press release reads, "There is legal precedent for such a Fund..."

That excerpt prompted The Atlantic's legal analyst, Quinta Jurecic, to comment, "This press release reads a tad defensive to me."

National security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed out that Blanche is supposed to appear before lawmakers to answer questions this week.

Some legal analysts were skeptical, but others were downright disgusted.

"Acting AG Todd Blanche directly involved," said Lawfare's Roger Parloff.

Other legal and national security analysts questioned some specifics about the new DOJ "policy."

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss questioned whether the judge would be willing to play ball with Trump after he asked to drop the case.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say the judge overseeing Trump's IRS case is not going to just let this slide the way he is hoping," Moss wrote on BlueSky.

He later added the fund mentioned in the DOJ release to claim "precedent" is vastly different from the one that Blanche and Trump have developed.

"That fund was crafted as part of a legal settlement that required court approval and directly responded to the legal claims for damages in the lawsuit itself. Trump's slush fund has none of this," Moss wrote.

Law school professor Jon Becker half-joked, "Tired: reparations for slavery Wired: reparations for being prosecuted for committing crimes."

"A slush fund for Trump’s goon squad. Paid for with American tax dollars," said veteran reporter Jim Acosta.

"How many different ways can one president try to spend unappropriated money?" asked lawyer Joe Dudek.

Media Matters for America fellow Matthew Gertz commented, "The president is stealing tax dollars from the public treasury to pay off his criminal cronies."

Lawyer Michael Salerno added, "One has to wonder how much of this the Proud Boys et al are going to receive."

A furious Republican lawmaker and military veteran tore into President Donald Trump during a recent CNN appearance, ripping him for being "weak" and calling his latest troop removal from Eastern Europe an "embarrassing" gift to Russia.

Rep. Don Bacon is a GOP congressman for Nebraska and previously served in the U.S. Air Force for nearly three decades before retiring as a brigadier general. He has emerged as a vocal Republican critic of Trump, repeatedly butting heads with the MAGA wing of the party and joining the opposition to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

On Monday morning, Bacon appeared during a segment on CNN's The Situation Room, where host Wolf Blitzer pressed him about Trump's latest military moves. The congressman reserved particular scorn for the recent announcement that a planned troop deployment to NATO ally Poland was being cancelled. Members of the Trump administration admitted to being "blindsided" by the news, which drew heated criticism from numerous Republicans.

Given its past associations with the Soviet Union and its border with Ukraine, Poland is considered to be particularly vulnerable to military aggression from Russia. Some experts have even argued that it could be a future target for President Vladimir Putin.

During his Monday appearance, Bacon called the opposition to this move a "bipartisan" concern in Congress, and hailed Poland as a "model ally."

"It's a bipartisan concern, and it seems like it's a small minority position within the Pentagon that has the president's ear to do this," Bacon said. "And the vast majority of republicans do not support it, let alone across the aisle with the Democrats. We have received no assurances from the White House or the Pentagon about what is going on here. They're being very secretive [about] what this all means. And it's wrong. It's wrong to Congress. It's also wrong to our ally Poland, who is a model ally. They spend roughly 4.8 percent of their GDP on defense, significantly more than we do. And they've been leading the way and doing the things that we've been asking."

He explained further: "Last year, the Pentagon decided to withdraw an armored brigade from Romania. There's three brigades that were forward deployed. So that took us down to two. Now they're not going to replace the brigade in Poland. So that takes us down to one. So they've removed two out of three. Or in the process of removing two out of three of these armor brigades, it sends a terrible message to Russia. They're giving zero concessions while we're unilaterally withdrawing forces from Eastern Europe. This causes grave concern to Poland, who count on this brigade as a deterrence. Also causes great concern to Lithuania, Latvia, [and] Estonia, who are on the front lines and very vulnerable. If we're going to pull armor brigades out of Eastern Europe, there should be concessions from Russia to do this unilaterally."

Bacon said that the move "looks weak" from Trump, and in "the way it was done with no warning to Poland, it's also embarrassing." He also noted that leaders on the House Armed Services committee are "angered" by the cancellation and are considering future moves to restrict the president's ability to make such decisions, saying that Trump is "forcing our hand."

President Donald Trump continues to suffer weak approval ratings in poll after poll, and respondents often cite his handling of the economy — including inflation — as a key factor. One of Trump's outspoken critics on the economy is University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers, who emphasized that Trump's policies are making inflation worse, not better, during a Monday morning appearance on MS NOW.

When MS NOW host Ana Cabrera noted that according to polls, "three-quarters of Americans" are feeling "stressed about their finances," Wolfers responded that the "pressures that people are feeling are absolutely real."

"Over the past year," Wolfers told Cabrera, "prices have risen by 3.8 percent. Wages have risen by 3.6 percent. That gap, it's small right now, but that gap tells you that the amount of stuff that people can afford to buy with their wages has gone down. We call that real wages. You know, I think the current moment, it's unusual, I think, in two really important respects that maybe make people feel the sting a little more."

Wolfers continued, "The first is that these crises last year — the trade war, this year, the Iran war — both of which have pushed up the cost of living, as well as deporting a big part of the labor force, they're caused right here at home. They come directly out of the White House, and I feel a certain fury about that."

The University of Michigan economist, originally from Sydney, Australia, noted the disconnect between Trump's 2024 campaign promise to bring down prices "on Day 1" and "the world which was delivered, which was the exact opposite."

Citing figures from Rep. Ro Khanna (R-California), Cabrera noted specific price increases — including gas up by 28.4 percent, airfares up by 20.7 percent and energy costs up by 17.9 percent.

Wolfers told Cabrera, "So normally, I'd come on and I'd say: Look, Ana, the president doesn't control everything. There's a lot going on. Except, all of this is coming out of the decision to bomb Iran, which upsets world oil markets — which then causes higher fuel prices in the U.S. And then, it's going to ripple through the rest of the sectors. So, all of that does come from right here at home. And it's going to continue."

Wolfers added, "Let me say that in two respects. One, you see fuel prices rise. That's the rocket in the pond. And then, the ripples are that jet fuel prices rise and air fuel prices rise. And then, the price of trucking your groceries to the grocery store rises. And on and on it goes…. This is a crisis for American families. And he's spending more time talking about ballrooms than he is about Iran."

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A recent dissent from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has prompted two legal analysts to question just "how far gone" the infamous conservative is.

Last week when the Supreme Court temporarily upheld telehealth access to Mifepristone, a frequently used drug that can expel pregnancies and miscarriages.

Thomas wrote in his own dissent, disagreeing with the majority of the court, claiming that the 1873 Comstock Act blocks the mail delivery and telehealth prescriptions for the drug. The law, however, applied to "obscene" materials and was used to stop the mailing of adult photos, magazines and other items.

“I write separately to note that, as Louisiana argued below, it is a criminal offense to ship Mifepristone for use in abortions,” said Thomas. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug ... for producing abortion.’"

Those pharmaceutical companies, Thomas claimed, "cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes."

He said that they should be "thrown in prison."

"Applicants, which are the makers of these drugs, are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise. They cannot in any legally relevant sense be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes," Thomas continued.

Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern spoke with "Balls and Strikes" deputy editor Madiba Dennie, who called the Thomas opinion "outrageous."

Stern wondered what Dennie made of Thomas "throwing down" and "making the Comstock act great again."

She keyed in on the claim that the companies are part of some "criminal enterprise" as if they were "some guy on the corner selling heroin."

"I'm just like, 'Okay, buddy.' Like it's like somebody's been watching too much crime TV," she quipped.

Dennie went on to say it was "really egregious and just really trying to legitimize what was once a fringe theory that the Comstock Act does apply here, that it is valid, that it's still good law and should be used to prosecute all so many people."

"It's truly something absurd. I think it just shows how far gone Clarence Thomas is," she continued. "The language is on another level."

Stern explained that the language comes from the "crazy far-right anti-abortion advocates."

"They have been saying for years that this is a criminal network and a criminal conspiracy, and Thomas is just like, 'Absolutely. I'm just going to copy-paste that stuff into the U.S. reports, right?'" Stern argued.

Dennie agreed, "I think you have seen this sort of trend for Thomas for a while. Like he always describes abortion as this really nefarious, like racist eugenics-like operation happening across the country. And yeah, he really sees the opportunity to sort of put that put that into into his dissent here and mix in some criminality for good measure."

Stern clarified that she wasn't being hyperbolic, that Thomas did describe it as a racist eugenics program in a previous opinion.

"So, this guy is not pretending to be a neutral judge in these cases. He is like, 'We must outlaw abortion and imprison everyone who participates in it, including quite possibly patients,'" Stern said.

Declaring he is “pro-freedom, pro-law and order, pro-limited government, and pro-the Declaration and the Constitution,” columnist Bill Kristol, the 73-year-old former Republican chief of staff to a vice president, announced last week he is now a Democrat.

“The Republican party is unquestionably and unambiguously Trump’s party,” Kristol wrote Monday at The Bulwark. “And the GOP will be dragged down by him, burdened by his dead weight, as it sinks this fall beneath the political waves.”

Kristol shared the results of YouGov’s polling of President Donald Trump this year. They show consistent one-point downward movement in approval each month, and consistent one-point upward movement in disapproval each month.

Trump, he notes, now stands at 37 percent approval and 63 percent disapproval.

Acknowledging that “the movement of American public opinion away from Trump has been frustratingly slow,” he says that even one-point movement each month adds up.

He then shared a two-pronged strategy to defeat his former party at the midterms.

“The pro-democracy movement has to try to continue to drive down Trump’s approval, to the degree possible,” he writes. “At the very least, it has to get out of the way as Trump’s own actions lead to public disapproval.”

He adds that the “short-term task of the Democratic party is also pretty simple. Tie Republican incumbents and candidates as tightly as possible to their president.”

That includes forcing Republicans to vote “over and over for Trump’s unpopular policies and for his unpopular vanity projects.”

“The best way to make sure Trump’s enablers pay a price is to make them continue, visibly and embarrassingly, enabling their leader.”

And if some break away, “grow sick of doing so, or decide it’s in their political interest to allow a little space between themselves and the president, all the better,” he writes.

“Trump and his party will be able to do a lot of damage over the next six months,” Kristol warns. “They’ll be able to do a lot of damage for the subsequent two years even if Democrats do win Congress. But perhaps the tide has turned.”

A new arrest out of Texas continues to show a "brutal pattern" emerging out of the worst pardons that President Donald Trump has issued so far during his second term, per a new report from MS NOW.

Last week, a 36-year-old Texas man, Ryan Nichols, was arrested and charged after allegedly threatening another man with a gun in a church parking lot. Nichols, notably, was among the nearly 1,600 individuals pardoned by Trump for their participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a major pledge that he had made on the 2024 campaign trail. According to a report from Law & Crime, Nichols, who was also, until recently, planning to run for Congress, claimed that he was a "completely changed" man since his involvement in the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

"Ryan Nichols, 36, is accused of displaying and grabbing the weapon, a pistol, while threatening and confronting a man over a 'prior disagreement' in the parking lot of Oak Grove Baptist Church in Harleton, according to local police officials," the report detailed. "Nichols, who attempted to run for Congress before dropping out in 2025, allegedly continued confronting the victim as the man was putting his family in his vehicle and asking Nichols 'to leave him alone several times.'"

As has been reported on extensively, Trump's brazen and wide-ranging use of pardons to help his political allies and supporters has led to an outright "crime spree" from these pardoned individuals, with the worst offenders by far being the Jan. 6 participants. As Steve Benen, a longtime contributor and producer for MS NOW, explained in a Monday report, Nichols was just the latest in an increasingly long line of repeat offenders.

"Just days before Nichols was taken into custody, law enforcement officials in Florida announced a prostitution, human trafficking and child predator sting, which led to the arrest of two more Jan. 6 participants who had received pardons from the incumbent president," Benen explained. "Two weeks before that, a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in North Carolina over charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and possessing sexually explicit images of children."

He continued: "Those developments come three weeks after a different Jan. 6 rioter who received a presidential pardon was sentenced to four years in prison on child pornography charges. Earlier in the month, a different Jan. 6 rioter, who was also rescued by Trump, was sentenced to life in prison for molesting two children. Around the same time, another pardoned Jan. 6 rioter was charged with threatening a police officer who served at the Capitol. This came roughly a month after the same man was arrested in Minneapolis after destroying an ice sculpture that was outside the state Capitol."

On the fifth anniversary of the attack in January, congressional Democrats released a report finding that at least 33 pardoned rioters had since been arrested for new charges. In March, a wide-ranging report from the New York Times found that 12 of these repeated offenders had been booked for "serious crimes," including "child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack."

As Benen concluded, there is considerable competition, so far, for the worst thing that Trump has done since returning to the White House, but as this crime spree continues to play out, his abuse of pardons, he argued, must at least be "near the top."

One of President Donald Trump's favorite terms is "drain the swamp." He didn't invent the term, which was used in the past by politicians ranging from President Ronald Reagan to paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan. But he made it a prominent talking point of the MAGA movement.

The term, in a political context, refers to self-serving bureaucrats. And Never Trump conservative Mona Charen, in The Bulwark, argues that the phrase is a "bitter irony" in light of Trump's "unabashed corruption."

Charen, who served as a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan during the 1980s, recalls that the Reagan Administration carefully screened applicants for possible conflicts of interest.

"When I was being considered for a job in the Reagan White House," the conservative columnist explains in The Bulwark, "I had to reveal every cent I had ever earned from any job or investment — which was simple since I had no money — and everyone else who worked for the administration had to do the same. It was a pain, but I was happy to do it, knowing that I would be serving in an honest government."

But Trump's second presidency, Charen laments, has been characterized by "wanton, shameless profiteering from the White House."

"We learned from NOTUS last week that he went on a share-buying spree in the first months of this year, purchasing stock in companies that were about to get lucrative contracts," Charen explains. "On January 6, Trump purchased between $500,000 and $1,000,000 — financial disclosure forms require a range, not exact figures — in Nvidia stock. A week later, the Commerce Department announced permission for Nvidia to sell chips to China."

Charen continues, "He also purchased stock in AMD, another AI chip maker, right before they too were granted the right to sell in China. Also in January, Trump purchased shares of Palantir for between $65,000 and $150,000, days before that company secured a billion-dollar contract to provide services to the Department of Homeland Security."

According to Charen, Trump is also "reaching his grubby hands into the largest till in the world: the U.S. Treasury."

"Along with an apology from the IRS," Charen observes, "the arrangement would also guarantee that the IRS would never audit any member of the Trump family ever again…. The United Arab Emirates is now less corrupt than the United States. So is Uruguay. And that was before the latest orgy of plunder…. Trump's claim that he would 'drain the swamp' is a cosmic joke. His administration is an ongoing shakedown of the American people."

President Donald Trump has agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. On Thursday, Trump said he wanted the government to set up a fund that would give money to anyone who claimed that they were unfairly targeted by the previous Democratic administration.

"Upon the filing of this Notice, no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any 'subsequent order purporting to dismiss "all claims" . . . [would be] a nullity,'" the court filing says.

Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff commented, "Trump apparently trying to get out from under any potential judicial supervision of his proposed $1.776 B slush fund settlement of Trump v. IRS."

He also pointed out a footnote in the filing, "Trump's [attorneys] say his motion to dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit against IRS is 'self-executing' —a done deal. He's just giving notice and no 'judicial action' is required. (He's saying there will be no judicial supervision of his settlement with DOJ.)"

Speaking out on it, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) explained to ABC News that the fund is unconstitutional.

"Only Congress has the power to appropriate money, and Congress never voted on creating this $1.7 billion political slush fund at the Department of Justice, and Congress would never pass that," Raskin told host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

He said that if people believe they have been wronged by the federal government in any way, a fund already exists to help them. They can go to court and ask a judge.

“If these people have a valid cause of action, they should bring it to the court like every other American does, and use the system of due process, and proving things by clear and convincing evidence, or a preponderance of evidence, go and prove it. But the idea that Donald Trump can just pass it out like a pardon is absurd,” Raskin said.

Critics questioned what Trump is getting behind the scenes.

"It's against the law for Trump to sue himself [and] then settle for a huge sum. The court has the power to put a stop to these shenanigans [and] should do so," said Trump legal foe and ethics expert Norm Eisen on BlueSky.

"No president should be able to sue himself for taxpayer money, rush a settlement before a judge can throw the case out, and bypass Congress to reward political allies and January 6 rioters," added Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Cal.).

"What we don’t yet know: What he’s getting in exchange. That said, there’s every reason to believe we’ll soon learn the details of the deal and the $1.7 billion slush fund," wrote MS NOW's Steve Benen.

“Trump’s claim that he would “drain the swamp” is a cosmic joke. His administration is an ongoing shakedown of the American people," wrote Mona Charen in a post on The Bulwark.

Legal analyst Benjamin Kabak took a screen capture of the breaking news alert on the matter from the New York Times. Their alert read, "President Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, in an apparent effort to effectively settle the case." Ben responded, "The words you want are 'corrupt, self-dealing,' not 'apparent.'"