The justice system’s falling apart—but the worst people are losing

Posted on by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Welcome to another week where we try to make sense of the justice system in an era where it is basically self-destructing. This week, though, we can report that it was a bad week for some of the worst people you know.

Do you loathe U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan? You’re in luck, because she is getting dressed down by the judge in her ridiculous prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. 

Hate Gregory Bovino, the cosplay-Nazi brute leading the administration’s violent occupation of Chicago? He did not have a good time in court this week. 

Think House Speaker Mike Johnson is laughably pathetic? Watch him suck up as hard as possible by slamming the Supreme Court and trying to hand over even more of Congress’ power to Trump.

Are we really doing this again?

House Republicans just can’t stop threatening to impeach, well, lots of judges, but they have a particular hatred of Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge for the District of Columbia.  

So, what is it this time? This one is a bit tough to follow, because it requires you to be fully steeped in the Deep Lore of Jan. 6. Somehow, Boasberg should be impeached because he authorized former special counsel Jack Smith to issue nondisclosure orders so that the legislators Smith was seeking phone logs from were not notified of the request. 

Texas Rep. Brandon Gill has a bone to pick with Judge James Boasberg for doing his job.

That is apparently, at least according to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who is very much not a lawyer, illegal and threatening, and come on, this stuff is exhausting. Oh, also, Boasberg has weaponized the judiciary on behalf of former President Joe Biden, which would be a super-odd thing to do given that Biden is no longer president and presumably isn’t trying to puppet-master the judiciary. 

What this clutch of House members is actually most mad about is that Judge Boasberg had the gall to tell the administration it had to turn around the planes of detainees they were deporting under cover of darkness. Of course, the administration just defied that order anyway.

This will probably be as successful and fact-free as the misconduct charge the administration tried to slap Boasberg with. This seems to have languished for a while, but what Attorney General Pam Bondi alleges is the mostest worstest thing a judge could do was to mention, in a private gathering of judges, that he was worried that the Trump administration would disregard court orders and trigger a constitutional crisis. 

Right on both counts, Boasberg!

This most recent treat time at the Supreme Court really sucks

Is it really treat time when it is a constant stream of treats? It’s no longer special or surprising that the Supreme Court’s six conservatives are absolutely in the tank for President Donald Trump. 

Want to illegally remove members of independent boards even though the law prohibits it? Have at it! 

Want to racially profile people so ICE can more easily detain them, even though the Fourth Amendment prohibits it? Sure! You do you, boo! 

But this latest one is super bleak, with the Supreme Court clearing the way for the administration to kick transgender and nonbinary people in the teeth some more by blocking them from having a passport that reflects their gender identity. This is, of course, not a ruling in a case that has been fully litigated. This is just the usual Supreme Court thing, where whenever a lower court says Trump can’t do something, he runs to the Supreme Court so they will block the lower court’s ruling. 

So, it’s literally an emergency if Trump is not allowed to misgender and torment trans people right now, even as the case proceeds through the courts. This is a court that welcomes Trump’s project to hurt trans people just because he can, and they’re gosh darn happy to get to help out. 

No treat time for Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia

Things continue to go swimmingly for everyone’s favorite real estate lawyer turned Smithsonian anti-woke director turned Interim U.S. Attorney—maybe?—Lindsey Halligan. 

Halligan was likely flying high when she succeeded at carrying out Trump’s demands to indict Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Halligan that there were about a zillion other steps in front of her in terms of actually convicting Comey or James. 

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan

Fam, is it bad when the judge in your case says you seem to have an attitude of “indict first” and investigate second? That seems bad, right?

The DOJ had been ordered to turn over grand jury materials in the Comey case for the judge to review and determine whether to release them to Comey. One of Comey’s motions is to unseal the grand jury testimony, given that it seemed like Halligan was just doing Trump’s bidding with the indictment, the inaccuracies in the actual indictment, and that every career prosecutor said they wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole.

So, even though they were ordered to provide everything, the DOJ seemed to have left out remarks from Halligan herself, who is the sole person who presented the case to the grand jury. The judge issued what could only be called a “Did I Stutter?” order and gave Halligan 24 hours to produce the remainder. Have fun, Lindsey!

No treat time for Bovino in Chicago

Is there a better example of the absolute depravity and Nazi cosplay of ICE than Bovino? Just an absolutely irredeemable dude, perfect for Trump’s war on immigrants and blue cities.

Gregory Bovino loves to defy court orders when it comes to terrifying immigrants.

Like Trump, Bovino thinks court orders are optional, so he and his band of cretins just kept terrorizing Chicago even after the judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping them from tear-gassing children without warning and using less-lethal munitions just because he feels like it. Bovino didn’t just ignore that order, he flagrantly, gleefully violated it. So on Thursday, Judge Sara Ellis upgraded her temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction, which is also a “Did I Stutter?” order. 

Of course, the administration is already whining about how their stormtroopers in Chicago are facing serious threats but showing “incredible restraint” and they’re gonna appeal, of course. 

And if you’re wondering how long it took Bovino and his thugs to violate the injunction? Pretty much immediately, with agents firing pepper balls at a car that pulled up next to them, because how dare Chicagoans drive near this band of trigger-happy Nazis. Surely that’s a shootable offense, right?

Looks like Johnson does actually know something?

Aww, poor Speaker Johnson. The only good thing about watching him relentlessly lie every day is that you can tell it is eating away at him. Not because it bothers him, but because he sucks at lying. He’s too much of a wuss to bluster, too overconfident to actually prepare, and catastrophically bad at speaking off the cuff. 

This week, Johnson had the weight of the world on his slumping little shoulders. He had to spin the GOP’s catastrophic losses in Tuesday’s elections. He has to pretend there is a secret plan to fix health care. 

But at least that’s novel. Most days he just declares that he doesn’t know anything about anything … well, anything bad that Trump is doing.

But apparently he paid attention to Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments on tariffs, and he is very disappointed in Justice Neil Gorsuch. Johnson is unhappy that Gorsuch expressed concern that Trump’s tariff scheme is a power grab from Congress. Yes, that’s the head of one of the bodies of Congress whining that the judicial branch isn’t signing on to let Trump take Congress’ power away. Jesus, man. Have some dignity.

Trump uses his shutdown to give his fascist minions a little treat

Posted on by Lisa Needham

As the government shutdown drags on—in no small part because President Donald Trump is desperate to hide his connections to Jeffrey Epstein—he is now picking and choosing who gets paid.

Unsurprisingly, it’s exactly who you would think. Active-duty military? Check. Air marshals? Check. FBI agents? Check. ICE agents? Check. 

You get the point. 

ICE agents detain a protester in Chicago on Oct. 14.

Because we no longer have any meaningful insight into the workings of government, it’s tough to figure out exactly how many people are drawing paychecks, but it’s not a small amount. 

There are around 1.3 million active-duty military members. And according to the Washington Post, there are about 70,000 people between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security who are also getting paid, presumably including FBI, ICE, and Border Patrol personnel. 

Basically, if a federal employee is fascist or fascist-adjacent, they’re getting paid.

As for the people who make sure that those employees get their paychecks? They’re not getting paid at all.

“We are called support staff, but I’d argue that we drive them. Just because they have a gun, badge, and authority doesn’t make them more important than us,” one ICE staffer told the Post. “It shows that the administration only cares about the gun holders.”

Well, yes. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times, in case you were wondering, is not meeting the moment on this one. Instead, it’s framing the Trump administration’s completely illegal diversion of government money to pay fascists as a “budgetary twister,” and that Trump is “stretching the limits” of his authority. 

The Times also claims that Trump is “reprogramming” dollars allocated by Congress, but that is not a thing. Trump can’t use the government shutdown as an excuse to allocate government funding to whatever he wants and nothing else. But given that the Times called it “expanding his authority to spend federal money” a couple of weeks ago, this tracks.

A cartoon by Jack Ohman.

As the shutdown enters its third week, federal workers are lining up at food banks as they try to keep their heads above water while not getting paid. That’s about 1.4 million people.

And all of this is happening while Trump demands the government to give him $230 million because being investigated for his myriad crimes and impeachment-worthy offenses made him sad.

He’s also literally tearing down the White House so he can build a monstrous ballroom, which is supposedly paid for by shadowy private donors who are lining up to bribe the president in exchange for personal favors.

Congress could stop Trump from diverting money to favored employees tomorrow, but the Republicans in control have no interest in doing so. And the Supreme Court has had ample opportunity to rule against Trump’s efforts to treat the government and taxpayer dollars as his personal playthings. 

But like so many things in Trump’s second term, the shutdown has highlighted that checks and balances aren’t magically self-executing. There are no rules, just norms to be completely ignored. 

Trump’s new favorite prosecutor is flubbing it big time

Posted on by Lisa Needham

On Monday afternoon, former FBI Director James Comey dropped two motions to dismiss his criminal case. Both are related to, in part, the antics of one Lindsey Halligan, everyone’s favorite insurance lawyer turned interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

This likely made for a not-fun Monday afternoon for Halligan, but then her day got hilariously worse when Lawfare’s Anna Bower dropped her story that Halligan had texted her out of the blue, via Signal, about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Bower had tweeted about the Oct. 11 New York Times story revealing that James’s great-niece lives in the Virginia home that is the basis for the mortgage fraud case against James, and that she had testified to a different grand jury that she lived there for many years without paying rent. 

That seems to be what made Lindsey Halligan lose her mind and contact Bower to complain that “your reporting in particular is just way off.” 

New York Attorney General Letitia James, shown in 2019.

This was probably exceedingly confusing for Bower, who does not work for The New York Times, did not write the story, and was doing no reporting. Instead, Bower had merely tweeted about the story.

Nevertheless, every time Bower asked Halligan what was false about the story or her characterization of it, Halligan offered a grievance-fueled response like, “Continue to do what you have been and you’ll be completely discredited when the evidence comes out.” 

Just after Bower contacted the Department of Justice on Monday afternoon for a comment and to confirm the texts were authentic, Bower’s Signal flickered to life with Halligan saying, “By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know.” 

There’s so much to unpack here. 

Halligan referred to Bower as a reporter multiple times in their previous exchanges. More importantly, you can’t declare something off the record retrospectively, much less days after the fact. But when Bower explained this, Halligan came up with a different rationale: “It’s obvious the whole convo is off record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal.”

It is gobsmackingly stupid to think that because you communicate on Signal and set your messages to disappear, it is off the record by default. Even setting that aside, there’s another big problem here: Halligan admitted she had set her phone to automatically delete messages that were official government communications, which are generally supposed to be preserved. (Also, hello? Ever heard of screenshots?)

Is this a good time to mention that Halligan studied broadcast journalism in college and could not feasibly have avoided learning what “off the record” means? Also, did she learn nothing from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal fiasco?

Actually, she probably did, which is that Hegseth suffered no consequences whatsoever. 

And Halligan likely won’t lose her job over this, because Trump actually loves this sort of petulant, aggressive weirdness. But she might lose her job over Comey’s motion to dismiss based on asserting that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. Not because Trump cares, but because the courts do.

Two of Trump’s other temporary U.S. attorney appointees, Alina Habba and Sigal Chattah, have already been disqualified because the administration’s attempts to string together temporary appointments to avoid the Senate confirmation process are, well, not legal. Halligan is running up against the same issue and could suffer the same fate. If she does, it could render the indictment against Comey void. If she’s not legally in the job, she can’t legally indict anyone. 

And yes, that would apply to the James case as well, should James go that route. 

Former FBI Director James Comey, shown in 2017.

Comey’s other motion wouldn’t result in Halligan losing her job, at least not as far as a court is concerned. Comey argues the indictment should be dismissed because he is being both vindictively and selectively prosecuted.   

Vindictive prosecution is exactly what it sounds like—that the prosecution is motivated by general animus toward the defendant. And Comey has everything he needs to make that argument. After all, Trump admitted that he fired U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert in favor of Halligan when Siebert wouldn’t bring charges, and then Trump celebrated the indictment on social media, making sure to thank Halligan and FBI Director Kash Patel. So thoughtful! 

To prove selective prosecution, Comey has to show that other similarly situated people were not prosecuted for the same actions. Fortunately for Comey, Trump has multiple past appointees who allegedly lied to Congress.

Let’s roll back to Trump’s first term. As noted in Comey’s motion, there was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions allegedly making false statements to Congress about his communications with Russia. There was Trump’s then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, allegedly lying about his use of a personal email account while he was Oklahoma attorney general. Then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price allegedly fibbed to Congress when he denied getting a sweet discount on buying shares of stock. And remember Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin? He allegedly lied about whether OneWest Bank, where he had been chairman and CEO, had used robo-signing of foreclosure documents.  

It’s tough to get more similarly situated to Comey than these four are. They were all high-level political appointees, all accused of lying to Congress, but only Comey was charged. 

Halligan is wildly overmatched here, but judging by her interactions with Bower, she remains blissfully unaware of that. She clearly thinks she’s running circles around everyone else, that she’s a unique genius who figured out how to indict Trump’s enemies when no one else could. 

In reality, she has no idea what she’s doing and no business doing any of it, which means it will be a delight to see what her office manages to file in response to Comey.  

Musk’s big mouth, and the DOJ’s unlawful meme obsession

Posted on by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Last week was … a lot, legally speaking. While much of the Trump administration’s efforts have shifted to trying to get courts to agree that President Donald Trump can deploy troops from red states to bring blue cities to heel, there are still many other terrible developments. 

We’ve got a throwback to Elon Musk’s idiotic actions, the Fifth Circuit is likely going to decide it’s totally groovy to force religion into the classroom, James Comey’s attorney is taking a page from Trump’s playbook, and the Supreme Court looks primed to strike down conversion therapy bans—because why not hurt trans kids more. Oh and last—but never least—is the Department of Justice’s meme antics undermining its own case against Luigi Mangione. 

Musk and the Trump administration FAFO

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of Musk’s own actions. 

The New York Times recently prevailed in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the Trump administration’s refusal to provide a list of Musk’s security clearances when he was a government contractor prior to 2025. Now the administration will have to cough it up.

Elon Musk stands beside President Donald Trump.

They tried to say that it would violate Musk’s privacy, but the court noted that Musk bragged publicly of his “top secret clearance” in 2024, making it not really all that private to begin with. 

The Times did not request additional information—like Musk’s application for clearances or any investigative materials—but the government still claimed that it couldn’t provide the form because it would show whether clearances were subject to any conditions, even if the conditions themselves were redacted.

This is where Musk’s boasts about his ketamine use, his cringe-worthy blunt rotation with Joe Rogan, and his chats with Vladimir Putin came back to bite him. 

To grant a security clearance, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency must review foreign influences and drug use. The court said that, while Musk has not publicly discussed any conditions, he has publicly addressed his drug use and contacts with foreign leaders. And since the DCSA is supposed to consider those things, the public has an interest in the DCSA’s performance of its duties. 

You can expect the Trump administration to continue fighting this because it would likely crack open the door for FOIA requests about Musk’s clearances at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—and they desperately don’t want that. 

The Fifth Circuit will keep hearing Ten Commandment cases until they get the desired result

In another horrible development, the Fifth Circuit has ordered a full court review of the three-judge panel decision in Roake v. Brumley—and it’s not an exaggeration to say that we should all be worried. 

Both the Louisiana lower court and the three-judge panel ruled that the law requiring public schools to permanently display the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional, because it so obviously is. 

The fact that they agreed to a review and requested new briefs and oral arguments is a sign that there’s an appetite to reverse it. This would mean getting a decision on the books holding that the government can force the display of the Ten Commandments—but only the Protestant version chosen by the state. 

Next stop will be the Supreme Court because, much like they did with abortion, states are going to keep passing objectively unconstitutional laws, shoving them up to the Supreme Court to bless them. Terrific system we have here.

Unlawful appointments giveth, but they may also taketh away

One of the challenges James Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said he will raise—and file a motion to dismiss the case—is an unlawful appointment claim. 

Former FBI Director James Comey

Basically, that would be that Lindsey Halligan, installed as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia for the sole purpose of indicting Trump’s enemies, is not legally allowed to be in her role. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, served the limit of 120 days in the interim position, allowing the federal judges to appoint him. 

The issue is whether that created a new vacancy or not. If it did not, then that 120-day interim use is gone forever, which is why the court ruled that Alina Habba isn’t legally in her role in New Jersey. In that case, the Trump administration argued that the 120-day clock starts over with each interim appointment, but that would make the 120-day interim limit entirely useless. 

There would be a sort of grimly hilarious symmetry if the Comey prosecution falls apart because a judge decides that Halligan was not properly in her role. Trump hit a stroke of luck when his all-time favorite lower-court judge Aileen Cannon ruled, wildly incorrectly, that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed and threw out the entire classified documents case. 

What’s good for the goose, etc.

SCOTUS tips its hand, and it’s not great

Tuesday’s oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar made it clear that the Supreme Court is going to strike down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. Doing so would also knock out similar laws throughout almost half of the country. 

There’s no credible argument for conversion therapy, which tries to force minors to be heterosexual and cisgender. Major health care organizations have denounced it, and people forced to undergo it report high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. 

The right-wing argument in Chiles is that it violates the free speech of therapists if they can’t compel children to listen to how their identity is bad and wrong. 

It’s an absolute sham of a lawsuit, with no evidence that the plaintiff ever intended to offer conversion therapy or received any complaints. Her lawyer, with the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom, told the court that Chiles was the subject of “anonymous complaints” that they declined to provide. 

This is just another case where the plaintiff is nothing but a straw man standing in to get the desired conservative result—which is to protect the free speech of bigots at the expense of the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ kids. 

Trump and the DOJ are going to tweet Luigi Mangione right out of jail

The DOJ is in trouble over how hyped it is to talk about Mangione’s guilt while in the midst of prosecuting him, with the public affairs deputy director posting on X interviews of Trump saying that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.” 

Luigi Mangione is seen in a courtroom wearing a bulletproof vest.

This is pretty much a textbook example of prejudicial pretrial statements, which are not allowed, as pretty much every DOJ prosecutor knows. But the DOJ is being steered by people whose main interests are creating cool meme content and hurting people, so they might not be so familiar.

When the court ordered the Trump administration to explain what happened here, they said that, since the person who made the post wasn’t part of the prosecution team, they weren’t violating the rule. 

This is nonsense, of course, as it would basically mean that the DOJ could pop off with these statements any time as long as the actual prosecutor on the case isn’t the one to say it. 

But this isn’t the first time that the attention-hungry, meme-driven administration ran into trouble with Mangione, who’s now moving to block the DOJ from seeking the death penalty because of the highly televised perp walk they made him do.

Trump team faces critical shortage of morally flexible lawyers

Posted on by Lisa Needham

It’s hard to find good help these days. What’s a president to do when all he wants is to use the might of the state to persecute his political enemies, but all of these pencil-necked geek attorneys keep saying things like “sir, there is no case here”? 

President Donald Trump’s retribution jamboree is being stalled out by career Justice Department prosecutors worried about stupid things like “the law” and “ethics.” 

Lindsey Halligan, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia

Take Elizabeth Yusi, a career prosecutor who has been an assistant U.S. attorney for about 15 years. According to MSNBC, Yusi will be telling Lindsey Halligan, a real-estate lawyer who has been interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for about 15 minutes, that there’s no probable cause to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud. 

How dare she? 

Looks like Halligan is going to have to roll up her sleeves and take care of this herself, just like she did with bringing charges against former FBI Director James Comey. Sure, the indictment was comically thin, and sure, she didn’t manage to make one of the ginned-up charges stick, and sure, she had to present it to the grand jury herself. 

Halligan, of course, was installed in her job because she’s perfectly happy to take on the shoddiest, most vindictive prosecutions. She was brought in to bring charges against Comey after her predecessor, Eric Siebert, said he wouldn’t. 

Trump took a victory lap after Halligan secured an indictment against Comey, but for all the fanfare over that, there is so much more that has to happen before Trump can live out his fantasy of putting Comey behind bars. 

Sadly for Trump, all of those steps require prosecutors. Many, actually. 

At the moment, Halligan might need to consider a crash course in trial preparation, because as of Tuesday, no career attorneys from her office have entered an appearance in Comey’s case, even though the arraignment is on Wednesday. Though to be fair, Halligan probably doesn’t know about this, since she’s never been a prosecutor and her only client as a defense attorney was Trump.

Instead, it looks like Halligan is going to bring in prosecutors from outside her office. Can’t wait for a passel of freshly minted Liberty University School of Law graduates to handle a politically explosive and high-profile prosecution. Well, at least those who weren’t smart or vicious enough to land a clerkship with the many Trump judges eager to mold new baby fascists.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the Trump administration’s eagerness to have one state invade another, it seems to all rest—legally speaking—on the shoulders of one lawyer: Eric Hamilton. 

A protester stands draped in an American flag as officers try to disperse protesters near an ICE facility in Portland on Oct. 5.

Hamilton handled Sunday night’s hearing about deploying National Guard troops to Oregon and was then bundled off to Illinois to argue about how cool and legal it would be if Texas troops were deployed to Chicago.

Normally, of course, there is a veritable army of DOJ attorneys to handle these things. But between resignations and purges, the DOJ doesn’t have a lot left in the tank. 

The agency lost 70% of its civil rights division. The top national security prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia was just purged. Multiple high-level prosecutors who refused to sign off on the DOJ’s quid pro quo with Mayor Eric Adams were also fired. Two-thirds of the attorneys tasked with defending Trump’s signature initiatives—like birthright citizenship and immigration—have bolted. And Trump has rapidly depleted the entire federal attorney bench. 

This is also why there’s such turmoil among some U.S. attorneys right now. Trump knows he can’t get people like Alina Habba—another of his former personal attorneys—or Halligan confirmed by the Senate. But he also knows that only the most bone-deep partisan loyalists will do his bidding. 

Eventually, all that the DOJ will have left are people who previously represented Trump in some personal capacity. Fortunately for Trump, that’s a lot of people. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they all suck.

Ben there, done that: Trump’s latest unqualified hire is a familiar face

Posted on by Lisa Needham

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. 

Related | RFK Jr.'s plan to 'Make Our Children Healthy Again' is another miss

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.

Related | Sean Duffy finds a new mode of transportation to be scared of

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. 

Hunter Biden to Melania Trump: Bring it on

Posted on by Lisa Needham

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.

YouTube Video

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!”

To be fair, Christmas decorations are very important for Melania Trump. But separating children from their parents, not so much. In a 2018 recording, she whined:

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.

Trump’s demand the Smithsonian erase history is equal parts terrifying and pathetic

Posted on by Lisa Needham

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.

Trump seeks to leave his gold-plated stain on the White House

Posted on by Lisa Needham

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.

Here’s how the Supreme Court is helping Trump put judges at risk

Posted on by Lisa Needham

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. 

Related | Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump's war on homeless people

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.