Donald Trump, senior members of his administration, and his congressional Republican allies are struggling to contain the political fallout from the leaked war plan chat scandal.
In multiple media appearances on friendly right-wing media outlets, they offered multiple excuses to spin what happened and promoted an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory for how Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic was able to get access to the chat.
Appearing on Newsmax Tuesday, Trump inaccurately referred to the text chain as a “call” and professed ignorance as to how the leak occurred.
“What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had Goldberg's number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call,” he told host Greg Kelly.
“I can only go by what I’ve been told—I wasn’t involved in it,” Trump added.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance tried to dismiss the scandal altogether, claiming on social media it was “very clear Goldberg oversold what he had.”
Fox News devoted the opening segment of all three of its prime-time shows on Tuesday night—“Hannity,” “The Ingraham Angle,” and “Jesse Watters Primetime”—to hosting Republican officials to spin the story.
Speaking to Laura Ingraham, national security adviser Mike Waltz, who invited The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief to the chat, saw a sinister motive behind Goldberg’s reporting.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” he said, “but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contacts and then gets sucked into this group.”
Trump has attacked Goldberg over many years for reporting that Trump called deceased military veterans “suckers” and “losers,” but Trump’s own former chief of staff John Kelly from his first administration verified that story.
Waltz also claimed to Ingraham that he has enlisted multibillionaire Trump financier Elon Musk to investigate the leak.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, led on by host Jesse Watters, echoed Waltz’s conspiracy theory that Goldberg had done something "mischievous" to end up in the secret text chain to which he was invited by Waltz.
She also compared Democratic anger about the leak to the Russia “hoax”—which was not a hoax and led to Trump’s first impeachment.
“The Democrats, there’s nothing that they’re better at than spinning a sensationalist story out of a basic set of facts,” Leavitt said.
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Trump ally, led off the opening segment of “Hannity” by praising chat participants for speaking “just like they do to the American people.” Mullin then argued that Democrats were raising the issue to distract from “disastrous decisions that the Democrat (sic) Party is having.”
The Trump administration’s argument—that Goldberg or some other outside actor had done something devious to access the chat—wasn’t far off from pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who argued on his Infowars site that the leak to Goldberg was a “CIA Vault 7 style operation.” Vault 7 was a leak of classified CIA documents to the WikiLeaks site in 2018.
The full-throated defense and attempt to spread disinformation surrounding the story across multiple outlets raises doubts about the administration’s claim that the leak was not a big deal. In fact, the high-level spin raises more questions about the chat and what the administration may be hiding as it refuses to be more forthcoming about what occurred.
Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
Republicans in the House and Senate were quick to follow Donald Trump's March 18 orders to impeach federal judges who ruled against his illegal actions.
But when pressed about which high crimes and misdemeanors the judges committed to warrant such an extreme measure, Republicans had no good answer.
For example, CNN host Kasie Hunt asked Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio what “high crimes or misdemeanors” these judges committed.
Jordan replied with what can only be described as verbal diarrhea.
“All I’m saying is, if you’re acting in a political fashion and not just following the law, the ruling on the law, and I would argue that frankly just his ruling in and of itself, remember the Constitution is pretty clear, Article II Section I, very first sentence, says the power in the executive branch shall be vested in a president of the United States. The president has the authority,” Jordan said.
Of course Jordan left out that Article III of the Constitution says that judicial power extends to “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States”—which is what the judges were doing when plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration was violating U.S. laws while carrying out its destructive agenda.
Rep. Brendan Gill of Texas, who filed articles of impeachment against the judge who tried to stop Trump’s illegal deportations of Venezuelan immigrants (an order the Trump administration ignored), was also asked which impeachable offenses the judge committed—and had a terrible response.
“This is for usurping the executive's authority, for demeaning the impartiality of the court by making a politicized ruling, and forcing a constitutional crisis,” Gill said on Newsmax. “That is a high crime and misdemeanor.”
Other Republicans also backed Trump and Musk’s call to impeach judges who rule against the administration.
“America is a Republic, not a dictatorship of the judiciary. It's time to get rid of the political activists masquerading as judges and re-establish proper separation of powers,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida wrote in a post on X. “That's why I'm proud to announce that I will be joining my colleagues in impeaching ALL the activist judges who are unconstitutionally blocking President Trump's agenda.”
And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he was going to introduce a law that would ban judges from being able to order nationwide injunctions.
“District Court judges have issued RECORD numbers of national injunctions against the Trump administration - a dramatic abuse of judicial authority. I will introduce legislation to stop this abuse for good,” Hawley said, without acknowledging that maybe it’s because no other administration has ever initiated so many lawless actions that violate the Constitution.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley didn’t explicitly say he supported impeaching the judges, but he made it clear he believes what the judges did was wrong—and will use his powerful committee to go after those judges.
“Another day, another judge unilaterally deciding policy for the whole country. This time to benefit foreign gang members,” Grassley wrote in a post on X. “If the Supreme Court or Congress doesn’t fix, we’re headed towards a constitutional crisis. Senate Judiciary Cmte taking action.”
And it seems that Musk read Grassley’s comment as being supportive of impeachment, because after Trump’s demand to impeach the judges, Musk donated to Grassley and six other Republicans who have supported the effort to boot them, The New York Times reported.
From the Times’ report:
Mr. Musk contributed on Wednesday to Representatives Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Brandon Gill of Texas. He also donated to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
“This is a judicial coup,” Musk wrote on X of a court ruling that blocked Trump from banning transgender people from the military. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”
Of course, it takes 67 senators to impeach—a fact you’d think Musk, who Trump and Republicans have framed as a genius, would know.
Ultimately, this impeachment effort is futile.
Even if House Republicans somehow succeed in impeaching these judges, there is no way that Democratic senators would vote to convict and remove them in an impeachment trial.
The end result of this ridiculous posturing: making judges fear for their own safety as they receive death threats for their legally sound rulings, thanks to Republicans’ vile rhetoric.
Federal judges are receiving death threats and have expressed serious concerns about their safety, following attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump, the Republican Party, conservative activists, and right-wing media.
The climate is so hostile, even right-wing judges are being targeted.
For instance, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister received an emailed threat that a pipe bomb had been placed in her mailbox. The email turned out to be a hoax. The threat came after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration, who was attempting to withhold payments from the U.S. Agency for International Development for work that had already been completed.
Federal judges are receiving pizza deliveries at their homes as part of an intimidation campaign, to let the judges know that their private home addresses are known. A bulletin from the U.S. Marshals Service noted, “We assess that these incidents are related to high-profile cases that have received extensive media coverage and public interest.”
Judge John C. Coughenour, who ruled against Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, told The New York Times he had been targeted for a “swatting” attack—a false police report of a crime at his residence that led to a police response. Coughenour also said he received a mailbox bomb threat, which was a hoax.
The Trump administration is on a losing streak in multiple federal courts, as judges again and again say the actions of Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency, and figures like GOP financier Elon Musk are breaking the law or overstepping their legal authority. An analysis by the Washington Post determined that since Trump was sworn in for his second term, he has lost a case every four days.
Trump has gone on the attack instead of accepting his losses like other leaders.
“If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
Trump has also promoted conservative influencers who have targeted judges ruling against the administration.
He isn’t alone. House Republicans have begun the process to impeach judges for insufficient devotion to Trump, while Musk has said it is “necessary” to remove those officials. Conservative media like Fox News has amplified the crusade, with attacks on the judiciary in service of Trump.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who leads the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc and has been a reliable pro-Trump vote, nonetheless expressed concerns about the right’s actions (without directly naming Trump).
“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 wrote in a statement.
Trump’s team has been ignoring rulings and defying orders at a pace that the courts are struggling to keep up with, and now those judges are in the conservative movement’s crosshairs.
In all likelihood, the situation will continue to escalate.
Egged on by wannabe dictator Donald Trump, House Republicans are pushing GOP leadership to let them embark on impeachment proceedings against federal judges who dare to rule against their Dear Leader—a time-consuming and destined-to-fail effort that harms the rule of law and could even wound the Republican Party in elections moving forward.
Multiple Republican lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against four federal judges who recently ruled against the Trump administration.
“Congress has the constitutional power to impeach rogue activist judges—and we intend to use it,” Republican Rep. Brendan Gill of Texas, who filed articles of impeachment against a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes that were deporting alleged Venezuelan immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador, wrote in a post on X.
House Republicans are pushing for the impeachments to move forward even as Politico reported that some GOP lawmakers view the effort to be “idiotic.”
“You don’t impeach judges who make decisions you disagree with, because that happens all the time,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico in early March. “What you do is you appeal, and if you’re right, then you’re going to win on appeal.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
Even Chief Justice John Roberts warned that impeachment is not the way to handle disagreements with judicial decisions.
“We are going to keep the impeachments coming,” Republican Rep. Andy Ogles Tennessee wrote in a post on X. Ogles himself filed articles of impeachment against a judge who ordered the Trump administration to restore websites it had taken down to comply with Trump's executive order targeting “gender ideology extremism.”
But complicating things for Republican leadership is that Trump blessed the impeachment efforts on Tuesday, saying that the judge who tried to block his effort to deport immigrants without due process is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote in a deranged Truth Social post.
Co-President Elon Musk, who has threatened to fund primary challenges to Republicans who don’t do what Trump says, also wants judicial impeachments.
“This is a judicial coup. We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Tuesday after another federal judge ruled against the Trump administration, this time on its attempted ban of transgender troops.
Given that GOP leaders acquiesce to all of Trump's wants, no matter how immoral or unconstitutional, his demand puts them in a difficult place of having to choose what’s right or to make their Dear Leader happy.
“Everything is on the table,” Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, told Politico. An unnamed spokesperson to House Speaker Mike Johnson also told Politico that judges “with political agendas pose a significant threat” and that Johnson "looks forward to working with the Judiciary Committee as they review all available options under the Constitution to address this urgent matter.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
But as aides for Johnson publicly said all options are on the table, top GOP aides privately admitted the impeachment route is stupid and will take up time the House needs to pass the rest of Trump’s destructive and unpopular agenda.
“It’s never going to happen,” an unnamed senior Republican aide told Politico. “There aren’t the votes.”
Plus, forcing Republicans to vote on impeachment could be politically damaging for the GOP.
Polling from February—when Republicans began crowing about impeaching judges who ruled against Trump—showed that voters want Trump to follow court orders.
"This court issue is a big loser for Trump," CNN's Harry Enten wrote in a post on X, referring to a Washington Post poll from February. "The belief that Trump must follow court orders is more popular than Mother Teresa: 84% of all adults, 92% of Dems, 82% of Indies & 79% of the GOP."
Other polls have similar findings, including an NBC News survey released Wednesday. It found that a plurality of voters (43%) believe the president and executive branch have too much power, as opposed to the 28% who believe the Supreme Court and judicial branch have too much.
The cherry on top of this for GOP leaders is that their members would be taking potentially damaging votes on impeachment for nothing. The charges would be disposed of in the Senate, where there is no way on earth that two-thirds of the chamber would vote to convict and remove judges. Republicans have just 53 votes there. To impeach a judge, they’d need 14 Democrats to also join in.
But never put it past Republicans to do stupid things in the name of subservience to Trump.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a federal judge who attempted to block his administration from deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran gulag should be impeached and removed.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg halted Trump's attempt to deport without due process the alleged Venezuelan immigrants he accused of being members of a violent gang. Trump already ignored Boasberg's order to turn around the planes, which were carrying the alleged immigrants to El Salvador.
But now he wants Boasberg removed altogether, saying in a deranged Truth Social post that Boasberg is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."
"He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!" Trump wrote in his insane and lie-filled screed. "I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"
Multiple House Republicans want to impeach judges who have ruled against Trump and his administration's other illegal actions, including those largely conducted through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy," Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said in a post on X in February, after the judge blocked DOGE staffers from accessing Treasury Department data. Shortly after that post, Crane introduced articles of impeachment against Engelmayer, accusing him of violating his oath and abusing his judicial powers.
And freshman Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said this past Saturday he was introducing articles of impeachment against Boasberg.
Co-President Elon Musk replied to Gill’s post, writing in an X post that Boasberg’s impeachment is “necessary.”
Elon Musk
But this is the first time Trump has publicly blessed Republican efforts to try to remove judges who are simply interpreting and applying the laws.
Trump got on the impeachment train after Musk, who has not just called for Boasberg’s impeachment but for the disposal of multiple other judges who have ruled against Trump.
“There needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one,” Musk wrote in a post on X in February.
Even the right-wing New York Post editorial board has told Republicans to cut it out with their thirst for ousting federal judges.
“It’s nothing of the kind, and cheering it only makes Musk look reckless—a reputation he doesn’t need when many DOGE actions also face court challenge,” the board wrote.
Meanwhile, the Republican impeachment efforts have led to warnings from sitting federal judges that the campaign to clear the federal bench of anyone who rules against Trump will chill the judicial branch from applying the law out of fear of retribution or even violence.
“Impeachment is not—shouldn’t be—a short circuiting of that process, and so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that,” U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Sullivan said at a news conference earlier in March, according to a report from Bloomberg Law.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the calls for judicial impeachments.
"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,” Roberts said in a curt statement on Tuesday—a sign he thinks the impeachment talk is dangerous and not merely bluster.
It’s unclear if any of the impeachment efforts will make it to the House floor for a vote. But if they do, we will see just how many Republicans will shred the rule of law to blindly follow Dear Leader.
President Donald Trump thrust the country even further into a constitutional crisis over the weekend with a series of blatantly illegal actions that left legal scholars sounding alarm bells about the future of the United States.
Not only has Trump declared speech he doesn’t like to be illegal, he is even ignoring court orders as part of his deportation quest.
“Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer whom Trump targeted by removing his security clearance, wrote in a post on X.
Zaid also predicted that the actions Trump took this weekend “[u]ltimately will lead to Trump impeachment proceedings” if Democrats win control of Congress.
Trump began his past weekend by baselessly accusing media outlets that do not publish universally positive news about him of engaging in unlawful activity, saying in a nakedly partisan speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, “It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal."
President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on. March 17, 2025
On the same day, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, revoking security clearances of lawyers who work at the firm, and saying he will cancel the contracts of any companies or entities that are represented by the law firm’s attorneys.
He targeted this law firm because it hired a prosecutor who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Trump also targeted the firm because it employed a lawyer who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records.
Trump had already targeted two other large law firms—Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling—for similar reasons, all an attempt to try to scare lawyers out of representing people or causes Trump doesn’t like.
When Trump issued the new executive order against Paul, Weiss, a federal judge had already blocked part of Trump’s order against Perkins Coie, whose lawyers Trump tried to ban from federal buildings. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell accused the Trump administration of illegally retaliating against the firm, which she said “sends little chills down my spine,” The Washington Post reported.
Not content with that illegality, Trump also effectively axed seven federal agencies created and funded by Congress, including the government-funded media outlet Voice of America. It was the latest time Trump ignored Congress’ directives by making the unilateral decision to cancel congressionally appropriated spending—many of which have already been overturned by federal judges.
Trump declared that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization and an invading force, and used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which allows for noncitizens to be deported without due process if the president declares that the U.S. is at war—to say that anyone he deems a member of Tren de Aragua will be subject to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal, and further that they shall not be permitted residence in the United States.”
“The United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority—which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations—is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman, whose organization sued the Trump administration over the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, said in a news release.
“From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful,” she continued.
In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador on March 16, 2025.
Trump put more than 230 Venezuelans he accused of being Tren de Aragua members on a plane and sent them to a violent prison in El Salvador, where thousands of men are housed in cramped cells and are never allowed outdoors. It’s unclear if any of the men on the plane were actually members of the gang, with one lawyer for one of the deported immigrants saying that his client had been wrongfully labeled a gang member because of misinterpreted tattoos, The New York Times reported.
Trump sent the immigrants to El Salvador despite a judge ordering him to turn the planes around and return the immigrants to the United States, a blatant violation of the separation of powers.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration did not follow the order because "[a] single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil."
Even more disturbing is that the Trump administration then posted a propaganda video to his Truth Social profile. The video depicts the deportations, with masked jail officials mistreating the Venezuelans whom Trump sent to El Salvador, possibly never to be seen again.
And on Sunday, Trump took his lawlessness to new heights when he ridiculously declared in a batshit-crazy Truth Social post that pardons former President Joe Biden issued to members of Congress on the now-defunct committee that probed the Capitol insurrection are "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT."
Trump said Biden’s pardons of the members of Congress are void because he baselessly claimed that Biden did not know that the pardons were issued. He appears to have based this new conspiracy theory off an article in the right-wing New York Post, which said that a “key aide” to Biden determined which orders he would sign and which would be signed by autopen.
However, from the Post’s own report:
One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.
Meanwhile, as the United States delved deeper into authoritarianism, Trump was more concerned with his favorite pastime: golf.
In a move taken straight from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s playbook, Trump congratulated himself for winning a golf championship at one of his shitty golf properties in Florida, writing in a Truth Social post: "Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!"
Oklahoma's Department of Education, led by far-right Superintendent Ryan Walters, tried to sneak a provision into the state's social studies curriculum that would force teachers to teach students that there were "discrepancies" in the 2020 presidential election, the Oklahoma Voice reported on Friday.
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been lying for years that the 2020 election was stolen from Dear Leader. Republicans have made baseless allegations of fraud they’ve never provided any evidence for, election deniers have run for office explicitly on the platform of making sure future elections aren’t “stolen,” and Trump himself has led a successful purge of GOP lawmakers who dared admit that he was wrong for saying the election was stolen and inciting an insurrection over it.
But the move by the state’s Education Department takes that lie to the next level, forcing it into the school’s curriculum so that impressionable kids view the Big Lie as canon, rather than being taught the actual history that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud and incited a riot to help Trump remain in power despite his defeat.
An election board inspector Pat Cook readies "I Voted" stickers for voters during early voting in Oklahoma City on Oct. 29, 2010.
According to the Oklahoma Voice, the new curriculum would make high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” including “sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
The Oklahoma Voice reported that Walters absurdly claimed that the new curriculum is “not set up to either support or negate a specific outcome in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
“Our standards are designed to teach students how to investigate and calculate the specific details surrounding that (or any) election,” Walters said in a statement to the outlet. “In order to oppose or support the outcome, a well rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.”
However, even putting the idea into kids’ heads that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 election is a disgusting distortion of the truth and history.
The only thing students should be taught is that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud in order to explain away his loss and to spur an uprising to help keep him in office.
The new curriculum is not yet in place. According to the Oklahoma Voice, the Oklahoma Legislature has 30 legislative days to either approve or reject the change.
"If they do nothing, the proposal would take effect as written, according to state law. Gov. Kevin Stitt would have veto power if a legislative resolution lands on his desk. The current social studies standards remain in effect until new standards are approved," the Oklahoma Voice reported.
But the Oklahoma Voice reported that GOP leaders in the Legislature aren’t objecting to the new curriculum.
Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters prays on behalf of Donald Trump in a video that his administration requested in November 2024 that state schools play for students.
“As far as what’s in that curriculum, I have not looked at it yet, and so we’ll circle back and look at it and see exactly what it says,” Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton said, according to the Oklahoma Voice. “But that is history. We can always talk about what happened in 2020 and why people felt like they were disenfranchised and also talk about what was good about it, what was bad about it but it’s all part of the discussion.”
Walters has a long history of using the state’s school system to pander to Trump.
In November, Walters tried to force schools to show a video in which he criticized the “radical left” and “woke teachers’ unions,” and asked students to pray for Trump—a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.
To no one’s surprise, House Republicans can’t seem to get their priorities in line.
While some far-right Republicans are directing their attention to further punishing Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas—who was ejected from the chamber after dissenting during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress—the GOP caucus should really turn its attention toward preventing a federal government shutdown.
But leave it to the House Freedom Caucus to be too bogged down with scheming ways to show their fealty to Trump to work on averting a shutdown, which could furlough thousands of federal workers.
Both chambers of Congress only have until midnight Friday to pass a funding bill, and House Republicans only released their 99-page measure to avert a shutdown this past Saturday. The bill, which would fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, would increase defense spending and cut non-defense discretionary spending.
House Speaker Mike Johnson will bring the bill to the floor for a vote this week, likely on Tuesday, but we don’t know whether it will pass. Trump is publicly pressuring Republicans into voting for it, but Democrats will likely oppose it.
At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already said he’d oppose the bill. And given the Republican’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson can’t afford to lose another GOP vote. Given this, one might think that Republicans would be working to whip up votes for the bill, but some of the more hardline caucus members have other priorities.
Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas, dissents during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.
According to Punchbowl News, Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a member of the far-right House Freedom Conference, authored a bogus resolution calling Green’s actions “a breach of decorum” and suggesting that he “be removed from his committee assignments.”
Later that year, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who made appearances at white nationalist events, also lost his assignments after he shared a violent animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
In comparison, this form of punishment is often used as petty retribution against Democrats. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Rep. Adam Schiff, both of California, were booted from the House Intelligence Committee in 2023 as punishment for voting to eject Greene and Gosar from their committees and for their roles in the impeachment of Trump.
Green’s worst offense is waving his cane in the air and declaring that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, which he and other Republicans are pursuing to help pay for tax cuts for the rich.
That’s not much different—or worse—than what happened in 2022 when Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado relentlessly heckled former President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address.
While Republicans certainly have a reputation for pettiness, there’s a sense that this new measure against Green won’t go anywhere. Johnson, for his part, reportedly thinks “that this measure should go away.”
That’s probably because he’s more focused on appeasing Trump and avoiding a shutdown. It’d be a bad look for Johnson, Trump, and the GOP at large if the government shut down less than two months into his second term.
The resolution against Green hasn’t formally been filed, but Republicans already feel like they won since they successfully censured him last week with the help of some traitorous Democrats.
In any sense, the move to further punish Green and pass a bill through the chamber at breakneck speed shows how far Republicans will go to ensure that Dear Leader gets what he wants.
But if anything, these moves don’t signify the GOP’s fealty to Trump so much as how truly terrified they are of him.
There were numerous, er, notable moments from President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, but perhaps one of the most striking was when he turned to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, patted him on the back, and said he “won’t forget it.”
“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” the president said while shaking Roberts’ hand after delivering his speech.
We don’t know exactly what Trump meant by this, considering all of the favors Roberts has done for him. After all, Roberts is responsible for authoring the decision that grants former presidents immunity from prosecution, essentially giving them power to commit crimes under the guise of “official acts” in office.
There was also the Roberts-authored ruling that narrowed obstruction charges for defendants accused of participating in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and the time when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority usurped the Fourteenth Amendment, ruling that states could not disqualify Trump from the ballot despite the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office.
In short, Trump could have been thanking Roberts for a number of things, but the president insists that his gesture was merely routine.
“Like most people, I don’t watch Fake News CNN or MSDNC, but I understand they are going ‘crazy’ asking what is it that I was thanking Justice Roberts for? They never called my office to ask, of course, but if they had I would have told these sleazebag ‘journalists’ that I thanked him for SWEARING ME IN ON INAUGURATION DAY, AND DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB IN SO DOING!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, with “MSNDC” being a portmanteau of MSNBC and the Democratic National Convention.
Judge Juan Merchan presides over proceedings in the hush money case against President Donald Trump on May 7, 2024.
But as judges who bow to the president receive gratitude, those who don’t are met with death threats.
According to Reuters, law enforcement has warned federal judges that they are facing unusually high levels of threat as they attempt to uphold the law despite Trump and his allies’ efforts to undermine it.
Eleven judges expressed concern to Reuters about their physical security, saying that they’ve faced death threats in recent weeks.
And Musk isn’t the only one criticizing the judiciary.
In February, Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” suggesting that Trump possesses ultimate authority.
While Roberts hasn’t been as compliant as some other members of the Supreme Court—and has even shown a willingness to break with his conservative colleagues—he’s still unlikely to serve as a check on Trump’s lawlessness.
At least two judges, Tanya Chutkan and Juan Merchan, faced threats for presiding over cases involving Trump where the verdicts were rejected by conservatives.
Meanwhile, the six Republican Supreme Court appointees, three of whom were appointed by Trump during his first term, have delivered some stunning victories in the president’s favor. And considering that conservative judges often assist Trump in his continued assault on democracy, he might have even more to thank them for in the future.
Roberts stated in December that “violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats” jeopardize judicial independence, so it would be hypocritical if he’s now helping Trump dismantle existing statutes.
