Although he didn’t take an official role in President Donald Trump’s administration this time around, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is proving to be quite the jack-of-all-trades.
When the onetime neurosurgeon isn’t showing up at the Religious Liberty Commission to basically agree that the Declaration of Independence and the Bible are the same thing, really, he’s now going to be a sort of roving expert on nutrition, health, and … rural housing?
Urban and rural housing! Talk about range!
On Wednesday, Carson was sworn in as the national nutrition adviser at the Department of Agriculture. Besides his nutrition/health/housing portfolio, he’s also supporting Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ work on the Make America Healthy Again Commission. Makes sense, really. Can’t let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have all the fun issuing incoherent reports.
Oh wait, sorry. Carson is also going to be the “Department’s chief voice” on rural health care quality. Got it.
Carson is just as qualified for all of this as he was to be HUD secretary during Trump’s first term—which is to say, not at all. His tenure in that position will largely be remembered for referring to enslaved people brought here in chains as “immigrants” and spending $31,000 on a conference room table.
Even in Carson’s glowing bio, you see no mention of nutrition, housing, or health care, save for him reminding people that he was the HUD secretary. Otherwise, it’s a litany of his neurosurgery accomplishments in the 1980s and 1990s, which has a vague “30-year-old still bragging about his high school football years” vibe to it.
Carson is emblematic of the administration’s approach to everything: piling multiple jobs on people with no qualifications. There’s Lindsey Halligan, who was chosen to wreck the Smithsonian based on her past role as one of Trump’s personal lawyers, and is now also going to be the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Or how about a different former Trump personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who is both deputy attorney general and the acting librarian of Congress, because why not?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has an ever-shifting number of jobs, but the one he is definitely least qualified for is being head of the National Archives.
Ric Grenell, when not wrecking the Kennedy Center, apparently also travels overseas to secure the release of U.S. citizens and also oversees the federal response to wildfires, because those are definitely all things that go together.
And last and certainly least, there’s former “Real World” star Sean Duffy. Not content to be wildly unqualified for his primary job as transportation secretary, he’s also now running NASA.
This multiple-job nonsense is partly borne out of a lack of regard for government service. Trump doesn’t care who runs the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress, as long as they are ideologically aligned with Trump.
But the reality is that Trump, having fired agency heads with actual experience, has no desire to replace them with career employees from said agencies, and also doesn’t want to have new nominees go through the Senate confirmation process. So, he can take someone already confirmed by the Senate for one position and just double them up elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Ben Carson will decide what food your kids eat, which hospitals serve your rural community, and what rural housing you can access, and … come on.
Why are we pretending he’ll do any of those things? Carson will just be another weird MAHA mouthpiece ranting about food additives or whatever. But hey, at least he’s getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to honor all his accomplishments—whatever those are.
Following her husband’s lead of threatening everyone with lawsuits, first lady Melania Trump is demanding that Hunter Biden retract his statement that accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump. If he doesn’t, she’s going to sue him for over $1 billion because she has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” over the comments.
What reputation does Melania Trump think she has, anyway?
Hunter Biden’s short response to her threat was “Fuck that!” which he delivered during an interview with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan. But Hunter’s longer response is even more hilarious:
“If they want to sit down for a deposition and clarify the nature of the relationship between Jeffery Epstein, if the president and the first lady want to do that … I'm more than happy to provide them the platform to be able to do it,” he said.
Per the BBC, Melania Trump’s threat was delivered by Alejandro Brito, who represents Trump in his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and Trump’s frivolous lawsuits against media companies.
But she’s got a few problems here as far as trying to extract a billion dollars—or even any dollars—from Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
First, she doesn’t have the juice the president does. Donald Trump can leverage things like government approval of mergers. Melania Trump has no such direct leverage. What’s she going to do? Not invite him to be a volunteer to help decorate the White House for Christmas? No doubt Hunter Biden would be very sad not to have the opportunity to stroll among the blood-red trees that she thinks scream “Christmas!”
I’m working … my ass off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right? … Okay, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a fucking break.
Indeed, why should Melania Trump waste her beautiful mind worrying about the effects of her husband’s immigration policies? She has other important things to do! Maybe she could revive “Be Best”—her vague well-being campaign from Trump’s first term—and demand that Hunter “donate” the customary Trump bribe of $16 million to the effort.
These days, she is ostensibly keeping busy filming her Amazon documentary, focusing on her “day-to-day life, what I’m doing, what kind of responsibilities I have,” as she told “Fox & Friends” earlier this year. Honestly, it might be worth watching just to see what on earth she thinks are her responsibilities. Recall that the documentary is costing Amazon $40 million. Maybe she can threaten not to include Hunter in what is no doubt going to be a totally legit documentary and not just a payoff from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to the president’s family.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive to view opening night of "Les Miserables" at the Kennedy Center on June 11.
Or maybe she could just write another book about how hard this all is for her and then have a robot read it.
Melania Trump may not have paid much attention to the endless defamation lawsuits that Trump has filed, but you’ll note that most do not reach the discovery stage, thanks to the whole payoff thing. Trump is still dodging being deposed in his own lawsuit against niece Mary Trump. That’s why Hunter’s comments are so perfect. Lawsuits require discovery and depositions, not just waving around a letter demanding $1 billion. And we know full well that both Melania and Donald Trump do not want to talk about Epstein.
The second problem for Melania Trump is that Hunter Biden is only repeating things that have been reported in the media. It’s tough to make a defamation claim stick in that event. This isn’t a situation where Hunter popped off with something no one had ever heard.
Finally, it’s not clear that she realizes that Hunter honestly doesn’t have anything more to lose. He’s been dragged through criminal cases, and the House won’t stop investigating him. He doesn’t have a billion dollars, so good luck getting that.
In other words, bring it on, Melania. All you’ve really done is tee up a lawsuit that would require the deposition of your husband about Jeffrey Epstein. Masterful gambit, ma’am.
If you’re planning a trip to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, make sure to check out “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” which will teach you about all the presidents who were impeached or resigned in lieu of impeachment. So there’s Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and … huh, that’s it.
Yes, if you look for information on President Donald Trump’s two first-term impeachments, you won’t find it in this exhibit. The Smithsonian removed them in July.
The renowned museum told NPR it would put them back one day. Sometime in the future. It wouldn’t share a timeline.
It happened. Twice.
Until that day, if it ever comes, the Smithsonian is a part of Trump’s rewriting of history, one that treats his presidency like an unvarnished success, a testament to the greatness of the man himself.
Though the administration very likely forced this removal, the Smithsonian spokesperson is still obliged to pretend this is just a normal thing, no big deal, just regular museum stuff where you have to roll back history 18 years, you know?
“Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance,” the museum said in a statement.
You see, they can’t include Trump’s impeachments because it’s just so much work to update things, per the administration’s statement to NPR: “A large permanent gallery like The American Presidency that opened in 2000, requires [a] significant amount of time and funding to update and renew. A future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”
That explanation might be a little less transparently bullshit if Trump’s twin impeachments hadn’t been included in the exhibit since September 2021.
If you ask the White House, they will explain to you that this is really all about returning America to its former glory and, of course, eradicating forbidden diversity. Per White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, for too long, the Smithsonian “highlighted divisive DEI exhibits which are out of touch with mainstream America,” and that the White House is “fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.”
It’s not just that the administration wants to remove negative history about Trump, though that is a driving force. It’s also about wanting the Republican Party, the federal government, and everyone else to display constant fealty to Trump. That’s why you see GOP proposals to put him on the $100 bill and on Mount Rushmore, to rename parts of the Kennedy Center after him and his wife, and to rename the Washington subway system the “Trump Train.”
But it also extends beyond Trump. They want to rewrite American history more broadly so that it panders to those like Trump and his ilk: white, straight, cis, conservative, rich. Vice President JD Vance has been empowered to purge museums of anything that doesn’t align with Trump’s view of American history as an unbroken success story. Trump’s team has demanded that museums and the national parks remove anything that’s supposedly divisive, which broadly translates to things that make white people sad.
It used to feel like saying Trump wanted to memory-hole the history he doesn’t like was a bit of a stretch. These days, though, if anything, it may be an understatement.
The second Donald Trump presidency is horrifyingly destructive, a bunch of end-times enthusiasts ripping the wire out of the walls, but have you considered that it is also persistently frivolous? Take for instance his $200 million ballroom addition to the White House, which he unveiled plans for on Thursday.
If you were wondering if this proposed addition will be a gilded palace as ugly as one of his homes or as his ongoing gold-plating of the Oval Office, the answer is yes: “Renderings provided by the White House depict a vast space with gold and crystal chandeliers, gilded Corinthian columns, a coffered ceiling with gold inlays, gold floor lamps and a checkered marble floor,” says CNN.
Even the rendering provided by the White House screams super-sized Mar-a-Lago ballroom, which is most definitely not a compliment.
An American flag flies in front of the White House on July 23.
Trump really does see himself as a master developer, a very special boy because he—and he alone—can build a ballroom.
“They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms,” Trump said on Thursday. “I’m good at building things and we’re going to build quickly and on time. It’ll be beautiful, top, top of the line.”
Truly, that is what the past occupants of the White House have yearned for, an ever-deferred dream that only Trump could fulfill.
Trump keeps saying that the $200 million cost will be borne by himself and private donors, and that it will be his “gift to the country.” The notion that outside donors will pay for this garish thing is supposed to sound better than taxpayer dollars being spent on it, but all it really highlights is this is just another way to bribe the president.
Indeed, Trump has created many opportunities for donors to line his pockets in the hopes of receiving favorable treatment. You could buy his stupid memecoin, which might’ve gotten you invited to a dinner with him. If you’re a media company, you could agree to settle a frivolous lawsuit filed by Trump in his personal capacity, and donate millions to his future presidential library.
Of course, the opportunity to make a teeny, little seven-figure donation to Trump’s inauguration fund in order to possibly avoid regulatory oversight has come and gone, so why not figure out a way to help “donate” to build America’s Ugliest Ballroom?
President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on July 30.
The fact this is even top of mind right now is ridiculous. Trump has been busy tearing the government down to the studs for months, but now he wants everyone to focus on his alleged ability to create beauty, to transform a space. He doesn’t have that ability, literally or figuratively. What he’s demanding is a hagiography, a rewriting of history that, as prize-winning reporter Jonathan Capehart put it on Thursday, is a funhouse mirror, a pretense at patriotism that is quite the opposite.
“Unapologetic patriotism is incomplete if it doesn't allow for a mirror to be held up to America, her people, and her president—to hold them all accountable when they have strayed from her founding principles,” Capehart said.
The desire to gold-plate the White House, to fritter away time on building projects and the like, highlights how un-serious Trump is. Yes, he’s deeply serious about using the government to destroy everything he hates, but he’s got people for that now—a whole Cabinet full. But he can’t help but fixate on imposing his tacky stamp on the country and forcing us to stare.
It’s the same impulse behind the birthday military parade and apparently pressuring the Smithsonian to remove references to his two impeachments. His need for adulation—and gold leaf, apparently—is bottomless.
Federal judges are, by and large, a cautious lot, not given to dramatic public pronouncements or calling attention to themselves. But now that the judiciary is under a sustained attack from the Trump administration and allies, some judges are speaking out.
During a Thursday webinar presented by the newly formed Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan group working to defend the judiciary, a couple of lower court judges were forthright about the threats they’ve faced after ruling against the Trump administration.
U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, an Obama appointee, revealed that, after blocking President Donald Trump’s catastrophic funding freeze, he received 6 credible death threats, along with more than 400 threatening voicemails.
He played one during the webinar, with the caller saying, “How dare you try to put charges on Donald J. Trump,” and, “I wish somebody would fucking assassinate your ass.”
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
Similarly, after U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship ban, he was swatted as a result of someone anonymously telling the police that Coughenour killed his wife.
From the bench, Coughenour has been forthright about Trump’s actions.
“It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain,” he told Justice Department lawyers.
Yes, much of this stems from the Trump administration’s near-constant attacks on judges, often whipped up by Trump personally. There’s also the willingness of congressional Republicans to go along with it, including some of Trump’s more ardent supporters introducing bills calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against him.
But the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, is also at fault.
Rather than squarely addressing the fact that these threats overwhelmingly come from the right and are driven by the president, Roberts has instead offered vague, anodyne statements.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said in one statement.
Yes, that’s all Roberts had to say after Trump personally called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to return the planes of deportees heading to El Salvador—an order the administration defied.
The Trump administration has now filed a misconduct complaint against Boasberg for private comments to his judicial colleagues, in which he expressed concern about the administration defying court orders.
The problem isn’t just that Roberts is wishy-washy about these threats, speaking about them without ever mentioning Trump by name or acknowledging that his actions are the foundation for the attacks. But he has also joined the other conservatives on the Supreme Court to give Trump whatever he wants, constantly overturning lower court rulings.
These days, separation of powers is indeed for suckers.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is the Energizer Bunny of investigating former President Joe Biden. His newest plan of attack is to examine Biden’s judicial appointments, pardons, and executive orders and, if any were signed with an autopen, they are “in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law.”
While Comer has enough juice to go forever, his tireless nature doesn’t make up for the fact that his ideas wouldn’t survive the scrutiny of a 10th-grade civics class. Comer can examine everything Biden ever wrote or signed or didn’t sign, and none of those things would mean that Biden’s judicial appointments could be undone. The only method to remove judicial appointees is the same as to remove Donald Trump: impeachment.
During a softball appearance on Fox News, Comer was asked if he was looking into Biden’s judicial appointments and said he was investigating “everything that was signed with the autopen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency.” While Comer was not explicitly asked about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, his whole “null and void” comment came right after a segment focusing on her.
A cartoon by Tim Campbell.
It’s sheer buffoonery on Comer’s part to call Biden’s use of an autopen “the biggest scandal in the history of American politics.” Since Comer also thought that Trump’s insurrection was no big deal and Democrats had an “obsession with partisanship” in impeaching him, he has a peculiar idea of what constitutes a scandal.
Equally buffoonish is Comer’s attempt to explain when it’s totally cool to use autopens or digital signatures and when it is the greatest threat to the Republic imaginable. But Comer had to give it a try, given that NBC News found he used a digital signature on letters and subpoena notices related to the Biden probe—a signature inserted by someone other than Comer.
But that’s fine because Comer always signs “legally binding subpoenas” with a wet signature, and how dare you compare that to the “unauthorized use of an autopen” in the Biden White House. Unauthorized by who, James?
Comer is also stuck with the fact that the Department of Justice approved the use of autopens in 2005, and Trump has admitted to using them as well. Nonetheless, Comer is soldiering on, insisting that if Biden didn’t have knowledge of executive orders signed with his name, it raises an issue of whether those orders are legal. Comer has floated this idea for a while now, telling Fox News last month that if Biden didn’t know about the orders, “then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to execute his agenda a whole lot easier.”
Comer: "If we can find information that would lead us to believe that Joe Biden had no knowledge of those executive orders being signed in his name, then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to executive his agenda a whole lot easier."
Quick, someone tell Comer how a president can undo an executive order issued by a former president. There’s literally nothing easier, as all it requires is the president to issue an order saying the previous executive order is now revoked. Whatever Comer perceives is preventing Trump’s success, it isn’t Biden’s executive orders.
Were Comer to do some digging, he might find a president who didn’t know what he was signing. Unfortunately for Comer, that president is Trump.
Trump openly admitted he either doesn’t know what he’s signing or is letting someone sign things in his name. Trump signed the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove Venezuelan migrants in secret, but when asked by reporters about Judge James Boasberg’s criticism of that, Trump said, “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” and that “other people handled it.”
It’s not entirely clear if that was meant to be an admission or just a self-inflicted wound incurred when Trump threw Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the bus: “Marco Rubio’s done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that.”
Comer’s well-worn path is also being trod by Ed Martin. Martin was once Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., until it became clear that Martin was too unhinged even for Senate Republicans. Martin is now the pardons attorney at the Department of Justice.
Right after getting his new gig, Martin said his top priority was to review Biden’s pardons. Unlike Comer, Martin doesn’t think Biden’s use of an autopen is the issue, but nonetheless told ABC News, “the Biden pardons need some scrutiny. I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did and if they’re, I don’t know, null and void, I’m not sure how that operates.”
One doesn’t need to be a failed U.S. attorney appointee to know that, as with judicial appointments, there is no mechanism to reverse a pardon. Martin knows this, and Comer does too. But pretending they don’t is red meat for the Trump base, and that’s what they really care about.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is very concerned about what is happening with the courts, you guys. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why do you ask?
Kennedy’s remarks came during his Thursday speech at a forum titled “Global Risks to the Justice System—A Warning to America.” He was one of several speakers, including judges from countries where authoritarian crackdowns threatened the independence of the judiciary.
The bravery of those judges most definitely did not rub off on Kennedy, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In the face of repeated and ongoing attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump and his administration, the best Kennedy could do was praise judicial independence, as if that exists on the nation’s highest court any longer.
In this Oct. 8, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump watches as retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, ceremonially swears-in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, left, in the East Room of the White House. Kavanaugh's wife Ashley is second from right with daughters Margaret, left, and Liza.
“Judges decide issues which have political consequences, but they don’t decide in a political way,” Kennedy claimed. “We have to honor the fact that judicial independence does not mean judges are put on the bench so they can do as they like—they're put on the bench so they can do as they must.”
Come on, Tony. Your cute little deal with Donald Trump in 2018, where you personally lobbied him to choose your former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed you, was step two in Trump’s transformation of the court into a conservative grievance machine, following on the heels of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation the previous year.
You were perfectly aware that opposition to abortion was one of Trump’s litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees—he even campaigned on it. You were also perfectly aware that many of his lower court picks during his first term openly held anti-LGBTQ+ views. Trump explicitly chose judges because they would rule “as they like” instead of ruling “as they must.”
Indeed, when judges do rule as they must, and Donald Trump doesn’t like it, he attacks them personally. He called for Judge James A. Boasberg to be impeached after he blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
At least 11 judges have had their families threatened with violence after they ruled against the Trump administration. Many of the threats occurred over at Elon Musk’s Nazi bar, X, where Musk himself amplified some of them. High-profile Trump supporter Laura Loomer shared a photo of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, alleging that she was helping undocumented gang members and calling for Boasberg and his daughter to be arrested and his entire family to be deported. James Boasberg was born in California to U.S. citizens, so the deportation demand is equal parts chilling and weird.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour faced both a bomb threat and a swatting incident after he ruled Trump’s birthright citizenship order was unconstitutional. During his speech, Kennedy fretted that “Judges must have protection for themselves and their families. Our families are often included in threats” without ever acknowledging who is whipping up those threats.
Congressional Republicans have attacked judges on every front. They’ve called for the impeachment of judges who block Trump’s illegal actions. The Senate tried to get a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill restricting lower courts from issuing preliminary injunctions against the government unless the plaintiff posted a bond equal to whatever the government said were its costs and damages from not being able to do illegal things right away.
Whenever conservatives want to both-sides the threats to the judiciary, they have literally one example: At a 2020 rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer called out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Roberts immediately issued a statement quoting Schumer and saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
But when Trump relentlessly attacks the judiciary, including routinely defying court orders, and elected officials call for judges to be impeached, the best Roberts could come up with was, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
This is equally as mealy-mouthed as Kennedy’s comments that the judiciary should stand for the rule of law and “we must always say no to tyranny and yes to truth.” Notably absent is any mention of who is attacking the rule of law. Notably absent is any mention that the rule of law went out the window when the conservative majority granted Trump immunity. Notably absent is any mention of who is saying yes to tyranny and no to truth.
Kennedy doesn’t deserve praise or a cookie for these vague statements. If he genuinely cared about attacks on the rule of law, he would need to challenge his former colleagues. He would need to challenge Trump, the man he cut a deal with to get Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment. He would need to say that the threats of violence against judges only occur when they rule against the administration. He would need to call out the ceaseless attempts by GOP elected officials to knee-cap the courts.
Kennedy is not going to do any of those things, but he’s probably going to continue to make a lot of high-minded speeches. Feel free to ignore him until he tells the truth.
The Government Accountability Office just issued a giant detailed report about how the Trump administration illegally impounded billions of dollars by suspending approval of any new electric vehicle charging projects. Predictably, however, the administration does not care and responded by just shrugging it off.
You are probably wishing you lived in an era where you did not have to care about dense GAO reports, and you could trust that the government was just sort of humming along. But we all live in the Trump era, which means that government projects are subject to the whims of President Donald Trump or Elon Musk, which is why you’re now reading about the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program. Lucky!
Back in February, the Federal Highway Administration—which is part of the Department of Transportation and currently being wildly mishandled by former reality TV star Sean Duffy—issued a memo saying that the new leadership of DOT has “decided to review the policies underlying the implementation of the NEVI Formula Program.”
Trump shakes hands with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
The memo rescinded the Biden-era guidance for NEVI and suspended approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans. The only thing that would continue is reimbursement to states that have already incurred costs—but only until the administration gets around to issuing new guidance.
So why is the administration holding back this money? According to the FHWA memo, it’s the now-familiar justification for most of the administration’s actions in gutting programs: guidance has to be “updated to align with current U.S. DOT policy and priorities.”
There’s just one problem with holding back this money: the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which says that the executive branch cannot withhold funds already allocated by Congress. But the administration has been flouting the ICA for months, beginning with Trump’s attempt to freeze all federal spending, despite those funds already being appropriated by Congress.
So what happened when the GAO report dropped? Well, Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, currently very busy implementing Project 2025, went on X to say the government was just going to ignore it. Oh, and also that the GAO “played a partisan role in the first-term impeachment hoax.”
The GAO is a boring thing, and that’s meant in the most complimentary way. It’s a congressional watchdog that examines government spending and provides Congress and agencies with “objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.” Huh. That sounds a lot like it was already doing the sort of thing that the made-up Department of Government Efficiency says it was doing.
The GAO has 39 other open impoundment-related investigations, but Vought preemptively shrugged those off as well, saying that the GAO would call everything an impoundment to “grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt” and that all investigations were “non-events with no consequence.”
While the administration is busy flat-out rejecting the oversight functions of the GAO, Republicans in Congress are busy flouting a different oversight body. Last week, when Senate Republicans voted to block California from setting its own emission standards, they did so by overriding the Senate parliamentarian. Like the GAO, the Senate parliamentarian is a nonpartisan body. It advises Congress on anything that requires interpretation of the rules of the Senate.
Both the GAO and the parliamentarian advised that the Congressional Review Act couldn’t be used to strip California of its emissions waivers because those waivers are not the same as agency rules. Paying that no mind, the GOP just overrode the parliamentarian.
It’s in no way clear what happens when Republicans just ignore oversight bodies. There seems to be no consequences for the administration upending checks and balances to grab as much power as possible for the executive branch.
Republicans in Congress seem to be on board with this, letting the administration impound funds with nary a peep. Ultimately, the stance of the GOP is that oversight is for suckers and that anyone who tells them they can’t do something should pound sand.
This isn’t governance; It’s defiance wrapped in pretending that refusing to spend duly allocated funds is actually a boon for taxpayers, saving them billions. We know those savings are a lie, but no one seems to have any idea how to stop the administration from doing whatever it wants.
Because they are absolute ghouls, House Republicans are opening an investigation into former President Joe Biden’s health, including demanding that his doctor testify about Biden’s private medical information. Meanwhile, current President Donald Trump is so flagrantly and consistently incoherent that the only way for his administration to deal with it is to ensure no transcripts of his rambling remarks are available.
This latest probe is technically more of a reopening. House Republicans investigated Biden’s alleged cognitive decline last year, but thanks to Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper making the rounds with their book about how Biden getting old is the biggest threat to American democracy, they’ve got an excuse to do it again. And of course, after Biden announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, the door was wide open for Rep. James Comer to continue his unhealthy vendetta against the Biden family.
Not that Comer really needs an excuse. The fever swamp that is his brain likely means that pretty much any time anyone even mentions the Biden name, he spins up the House Oversight Committee to “investigate” something, anything. After Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, Comer ran to Newsmax to say that meant it was time to open another investigation into Hunter’s laptop. That was after he spent 15 months fruitlessly trying to invent some corruption for which Biden could be impeached.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer
The one-two punch of Tapper’s media blitz and Biden’s cancer diagnosis must have been a dream come true for Comer, who dashed off letters to Biden’s doctors and former aides. He wants Biden’s doctor to prove that his “financial relationship with the Biden family” didn’t affect his assessment of Biden’s fitness to serve, while also basically saying that the doctor helped cover up Biden’s decline from the public. Inquiries to former aides are so that Comer can “understand who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch during the Biden Administration,” with the implication there being, of course, that it was not Joe Biden.
Hilariously, Comer is pretending that one of the reasons Biden’s physician has to share the former president’s private medical information is that the Oversight Committee needs that to “explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.”
Comer has no actual interest in fitness to serve. This is just him building on Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric saying the 25th Amendment should be “modified” to allow for the removal of a vice president because Kamala Harris was part of a conspiracy to cover up Biden’s decline. Any real query into the capacity of a president to do his job would have to grapple with not just Trump’s inability to do the job but also his obvious handoff of vast chunks of decision-making.
Trump routinely makes things up out of thin air, but that’s always been the case. That makes it difficult to tell whether he’s lost the plot or is just lying. When he showed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pictures from the Democratic Republic of Congo and insisted they were instead evidence of white genocide in South Africa, it’s just as likely that Trump knew the truth but didn’t care as it is that he genuinely didn’t have any idea what he was looking at.
But even if you set aside all the times in which Trump blatantly lies in service of a political point, you’ve still got all the other times where it seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told the press he didn’t sign the Alien Enemies Act proclamation that paved the way for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, despite his signature appearing on it.
And he routinely admits he doesn’t know about major decisions. Earlier this month, The Washington Post compiled the most recent ones. He said he didn’t know his nominee for surgeon general, but had listened to a recommendation from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He said he hadn’t been briefed on U.S. soldiers killed in Lithuania. He wasn’t aware the administration was considering deporting people to Libya. He’s not the person responsible for the failure to bring Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia home from a Salvadoran prison, because, “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”
It’s a cliche to say that every accusation is a confession, but that’s pretty much what happens every time Republicans open their mouths.
Late last month, in his official capacity as presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, Chief Justice John Roberts got sued by America First.
That’s the legal group that Donald Trump’s senior adviser and chief ghoul Stephen Miller founded. America First typically keeps busy by suing everyone Miller finds insufficiently racist. This lawsuit, though, is wholly designed to do Trump’s bidding.
Yes, the lawsuit that would drastically shift power from the judiciary to Trump’s White House was basically engineered by someone who works in Trump’s White House.
You’re probably wondering why this hasn’t been splashed all over every news source, particularly since it was filed almost two weeks ago. It’s a direct challenge to the authority of the judicial branch, yet there’s been nary a peep until Talking Points Memo reported on it Friday. No official statements from the court, no missive from Roberts, no Justice Sam Alito penning a whiny op-ed. Just meek silence about an existential threat.
That meek silence might not seem so distressing if the justices were always close-mouthed about challenges to the judiciary, but that’s not the case. Roberts knows how to issue statements about threats to the judiciary’s independence because he does it routinely. Alito knows how to run to the Wall Street Journal when he wants to complain.
America First’s lawsuit is ostensibly about whether the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But what it’s really about is a demand that the White House be given control over an arcane, but crucial, part of the judiciary by declaring it part of the executive branch.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief ghoul.
Without getting too deep into the brainworms of this theory, it goes something like this: The Judicial Conference is an agency, not a court, because it doesn’t issue decisions. Instead, it is a body that makes rules for the courts. It’s also a body that must respond to congressional oversight requests. The chief justice has the power to appoint people to committees, so, according to the lawsuit, he is “acting as an agency head.” Rinse and repeat for roughly the same argument about the Administrative Office.
You know where this is going, right? If it’s an agency, it’s part of the executive branch. If it’s part of the executive branch, it’s under the control of the president.
In theory, the lawsuit is only asking for this so that those entities would have to respond to America First’s FOIA requests, but the only way that can happen is by saying they’re part of the executive branch, because their current status as part of the judiciary makes them exempt from FOIA.
So, what power would the president gain if both were under his control? Well, the Judicial Conference manages administrative and policy issues for the federal courts.
That sounds fairly benign, but in that role, it handles complaints against federal judges and workplace harassment issues in the judiciary. It prepares plans on how to assign judges if necessary. It promulgates the regulations for financial disclosures and other ethics rules. Imagine a White House that could weaponize complaints against judges it hates while ignoring any ethical lapses by reliable favorite judges.
What about the Administrative Office? It’s what it sounds like. It provides all the administrative support for the judicial branch, including financial, technology, legislative, and program support services. It also develops the annual judiciary budget and carries out Judicial Conference policies.
Imagine a White House that completely controls how resources are distributed across federal courts or decides which program initiatives the courts can undertake. Imagine that White House slashing that funding to the bone or letting Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency run roughshod through confidential databases.
Shifting both of these over to the executive would have another effect, which is that it would undermine congressional oversight. Right now, those offices respond to oversight or investigation requests from members of Congress. In theory, those offices would still have that responsibility, but they’d be controlled by Trump toadies.
Conservatives like Trump and Miller are unhappy that Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had the temerity to inquire into undisclosed billionaire-funded freebies received by Alito and Clarence Thomas. Those inquiries came after the April 2023 ProPublica report that Thomas failed to disclose literally dozens of destination vacations, private jet flights, and more from his billionaire buddy, Harlan Crow. The report sparked Whitehouse’s 2023 request to the Judicial Conference that it refer Thomas to the attorney general for investigation.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the subject of extensive ProPublica reporting about his failure to disclose all of the gifts he’d received from rich benefactors.
So, a close adviser to the president is puppeteering a lawsuit that would strip the judiciary of the power to oversee its own affairs and would hobble its ability to work with Congress on meaningful oversight.
But the most vocal conservative justices do not see this blatant power grab as problematic. At least, that’s what we can deduce from the fact that they’ve said nothing, despite being perfectly happy to speak out on far lesser matters.
Remember when the chief justice was so concerned that Congress not exceed its authority over the judiciary that he refused to appear before the Senate in April 2023 to answer questions about court ethics after news broke about Thomas? About a month later, he touted the judiciary’s “status as an independent branch of government under the Constitution’s separation of powers” as a reason not to allow Congress to impose any code of conduct on the court.
So what exactly does have to happen to rouse Roberts to raise the alarm? Well, apparently, a milquetoast statement from a Democratic senator.
In March 2020, while making a speech outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer said of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Heavens! Roberts rushed to get a statement out that named Schumer, quoted him, and said that "threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
By contrast, look at the statement Roberts made after Trump went after Judge James A. Boasberg, the judge who blocked the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan immigrants.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED,” Trump declared on social media. He also called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”
And it wasn’t just Trump. Multiple elected GOP officials have introduced articles of impeachment against multiple federal judges. Trump supporters have threatened the families of at least 11 judges who have ruled against the administration.
Did Roberts call anyone out by name? Did Roberts quote Trump? Haha, of course not.
Here’s the whole of Roberts’ statement: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
That’s telling ’em, John.
What about Alito? He’s someone who has not been shy about making public statements whenever he feels attacked. When Alito learned in June 2023 that ProPublica was publishing a story about his failure to disclose a fancy vacation paid for by billionaire Paul Singer and to recuse himself from cases related to Singer’s hedge fund, he had an op-ed over at the Wall Street Journal before the ProPublica piece even ran.
Justice Samuel Alito published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to attacks reporting about him.
One month later, he was back on the op-ed pages, the subject of a fawning interview co-authored by David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who had a tax case before the Supreme Court at the time of the interview. In refusing to recuse, Alito explained that Rivkin, when writing the articles, was magically “a journalist, not an advocate.” Sure.
Alito also took the opportunity to declare that Congress can’t regulate the Supreme Court, period, because there’s nothing in the Constitution that says so. It sounds like Alito is very concerned when the other branches try to intrude on the judiciary’s authority! Oh, wait, that only applies to Democrats in Congress. Apparently, when the executive branch makes a power grab, that’s just fine.
A few years ago, the America First case would have been the sort of lawsuit only brought by the weirdest pro se litigants who were convinced that Roberts was Illuminati or some such thing. The notion that the whole of the constitutional order should be upended, that the judiciary’s administrative functions secretly belong to the executive branch, would have been treated like the nonsense it was.
Now, though, this sort of nonsense is being pushed by one of the president’s closest advisers and just happens to track the president’s goal of eradicating the independence of the other branches of government. But still, from the Supreme Court? Silence.
