Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has disclosed that he had a private phone call with Donald Trump just hours before Trump petitioned the court to block his criminal sentence in his hush money case. The call raises new questions about the independence of the court and the court’s role in putting Trump above the law.
Alito claims that the call between him and Trump was about recommending one of his former law clerks for a job in the upcoming administration.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito told ABC News.
But after the two conservative leaders spoke, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency request with the court to prevent New York from handing down a criminal sentence for him on Friday. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records when he tried to cover up payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was trying to cover up details of his affair with Daniels, preventing them from being disclosed to the public while he was running for president in 2016.
Stormy Daniels
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito told ABC. He also told the outlet that he and Trump did not discuss current or possible Supreme Court cases.
But there is no independent confirmation of what was said in the phone call, nor has a recording been provided and the discussion has raised concerns about the court and corruption.
“No person, no matter who they are, should engage in out-of-court communication with a judge or justice who’s considering that person’s case,” Gabe Roth, executive director of the group Fix the Court, said in a statement. Roth also described the Trump-Alito call as an “unmistakable breach of protocol.”
Trump and Alito are ideologically aligned on conservative issues. Alito was part of the 6-3 majority on the court that overturned the federal right to an abortion in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Trump appointed three of the justices who voted along with Alito—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump has also praised the court for their decision despite the devastating effect it has had on millions of Americans.
In his personal life, an upside-down U.S. flag (a sign of distress) was flown over Alito’s house while President Joe Biden was in office, echoing other anti-Biden conservatives. The Alito family also hung an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their beach house, a symbol used by conservative “Stop the Seal” election conspiracy theorists.
Trump has a history of exerting corrupt political influence in private phone calls.
His first impeachment came about because Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to implicate Trump’s political rivals (especially President Joe Biden) in corruption allegations. Similarly, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump used a phone call as part of his pressure campaign to get Georgia election officials to throw out votes for Biden so he would win the race.
The Trump-Alito call comes just a few months after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court (including Alito) voted to put Trump above the law with a presidential immunity ruling, blocking him from being charged with criminal actions undertaken while he was in office.
The public has continued to express a lack of confidence in the conservative-led court. In an aggregate of opinion polls on the matter, the court only has the approval of 40% of the public while 50.3% disapprove of the body.
As Trump heads into the presidency with the court on his side, those trends are unlikely to improve.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump spent the closing months of his campaign trying to distance himself from a blueprint for his second term known as Project 2025.
Then, in the days after his victory, Trump picked major architects of the Heritage Foundation’s vision for key posts in his next administration, setting the stage for them to implement a conservative Christian agenda that has the potential to reshape the federal government and redefine rights long held by all Americans, though likely to disproportionately impact women, LGBTQ+ people and vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled.
One of these architects is Russell Vought, whom Trump has again tapped to lead his Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, an under-the-radar entity to most Americans that wields immense influence over the federal government by crafting the president’s budget. If confirmed by the Senate, a very likely outcome, Vought will be optimally positioned to inject Project 2025’s priorities — many of which reflect his career-long push to dismantle programs for low-income Americans and expand the president’s authority — across the federal agencies and departments that OMB oversees.
Ben Olinsky, who advised Democratic former President Barack Obama on labor and workforce policy before joining the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, where he works on issues related to the economy and governance, said that Vought’s vision for OMB as presented in Project 2025 is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term.
“I think that it's important to really make sure [Americans] understand what the plans are for changing the plumbing,” Olinsky said.
Vought has firsthand knowledge of the OMB’s wide-ranging scope. During Trump’s first term, he was OMB’s deputy director, acting director and, finally, confirmed director. In those roles, he helped then-President Trump craft a plan to jettison job protections for thousands of federal workers and assisted with a legally ambiguous effort to redirect congressionally appropriated foreign aid for Ukraine.
Vought has used two pro-Trump groups he founded — the nonprofit Center for Renewing America and its advocacy arm, America Restoration Action — to discredit structural racism as a driver for inequality and attempt to stymie diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. In August, he told a pair of British journalists posing as potential donors that the Center for Renewing America is “an organization I helped turn into the Death Star,” the fictional Star Wars space station that can destroy planets, and it “is accomplishing all of the debates you are reading about.”
The chapter that Vought wrote for Project 2025 details how the Office of Management and Budget could be a vehicle to advance the Christian nationalist agenda he favors — and he has not hesitated to talk about it.
Acting Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House in March 2019.
“I think you have to rehabilitate Christian nationalism,” Vought told the British journalists at the Centre for Climate Reporting, which released video of the conversation that was recorded using hidden cameras.
In an interview with conservative activist Tucker Carlson shortly after Trump’s reelection, Vought likened OMB to the “nerve center” through which a president can ensure their policy directives trickle down to the multitude of federal agencies and a civilian workforce of more than two million people.
“Properly understood, [OMB] is a President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course,” Vought wrote in Project 2025.
He sees two primary ways to ground wayward planes: by eliminating potential dissent within agencies and withholding money appropriated by Congress for projects and programs the president does not support.
Both would clear the way for Trump’s next administration to implement many of the priorities detailed in Project 2025, which could essentially redefine rights, systems and cultural norms for all Americans.
Some of Project 2025’s recommendations include restricting abortion access and supporting a “biblically based” definition of family, because the “male-female dyad is essential to human nature,” by replacing policies related to LGBTQ+ equity with those that “support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.”
It also suggests transforming the FBI into a politically motivated entity to settle scores and barring U.S. citizens from receiving federal housing assistance if they live with anyone who is not a citizen or permanent legal resident, which would serve Trump’s campaign promise to take extraordinary measures to crack down on illegal immigration. During remarks in September titled “Theology of America’s Statecraft: The Case for Immigration Restriction,” Vought justified the separation of families and condemned so-called sanctuary cities, or those that pass laws that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. “Failing to secure the border is a complete abdication of [the government’s] God-given responsibility,” he said.
Olinsky explained that while many of the policies in Project 2025 have been floating around Republican circles in Washington for years without gaining much traction, the document is a detailed roadmap that shows how its authors believe they can finally deliver on key pieces of their conservative Christian agenda.
“One, it says all of the quiet parts out loud about the full scope of the agenda. And then the second thing, which I think is something folks should really pay attention to, is it says how they're going to accomplish it, practically, by using executive action,” Olinsky said.
In many ways, Vought’s approach to bending the federal government to a president’s will began taking shape during Trump’s first administration. In late 2020, as Trump’s first term drew to a close, Vought helped him craft an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which reclassified thousands of civil servants and, with that, stripped them of their job protections; Vought recommended that close to 90 percent of OMB’s workforce be reclassified.
President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order on his third day in office. Project 2025 recommends reinstating it.
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation to protect federal employees, warned of a “loyalty-based system that would impede the work of the federal government, expose people to intimidation and bring people into jobs that are not qualified to do them, thus risking the American public’s safety and quality of life.”
Vought is among the Trump loyalists who have been open about their desire to slash the federal workforce — as a route to purge critics, improve efficiency or both.
In the interview with Carlson, Vought said, “There certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.” His language appeared to communicate an effort to ensure obedience and compliance. With the firings and layoffs, Vought said he wants to avoid having “really awesome Cabinet secretaries sitting on top of massive bureaucracies that largely don’t do what they tell them to do.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests to discuss Vought’s selection for OMB or the chapter he wrote for Project 2025 about the agency. The 19th reached out to Vought through his Center for Renewing America, which likewise did not respond to a request for comment.
Power of the Purse
During Trump’s first term, OMB helped find money to begin building a small section of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a key campaign promise Trump made in 2016 — “because Congress wouldn’t give him the ordinary money,” Vought told Carlson.
Trump also enlisted OMB to withhold $400 million in military aid that Congress approved for Ukraine, as Trump and his associates tried to pressure the country to investigate Biden and his family. The move prompted the abuse-of-power case House Democrats made against Trump during his first impeachment, when Vought defied a subpoena to testify. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, concluded that the scheme violated the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Days later, the Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump. (Trump had eventually released the aid.)
When Trump subsequently nominated Vought to lead OMB in 2020, Democrats opposed him because of his approach to impoundment authority. He was nonetheless confirmed.
Vought’s path to confirmation is all but certain this time around: Republicans control the Senate, the congressional chamber charged with approving presidential nominations. Very likely to feature in his confirmation hearings is Vought’s belief that the OMB can help Trump overcome opposition and implement policy priorities, possibly including those contained in Project 2025, by redirecting or refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress, which under the Constitution holds the power of the purse.
“Making Impoundment Great Again!” Vought wrote in June on X, riffing on the “Make America Great Again” slogan that has come to define Trump’s movement.
A copy of Project 2025 is held during the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Trump spent his campaign insisting that he had not read Project 2025 and did not know its authors. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote in a July post on his Truth Social platform.
But of the more than 350 people who contributed to Project 2025, at least 60 percent are linked to the incoming president, according to a list of contributors and their ties reviewed by The 19th. They range from appointees and nominees from Trump’s first administration, like Vought, to members of his previous transition team and those who served on commissions and as unofficial advisers.
Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, seized on Project 2025 during their campaigns to highlight the dangers they believe are posed by a second Trump presidency. At 920 pages, it offers a vision of government that is far more detailed and specific than the policy proposals put forward by Trump directly. The “Agenda 47” on Trump’s campaign website was a list of 20 bullet points that included vague policies like “end the weaponization of government against the American people” and “unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success.”
When Trump announced Vought as his OMB pick, he said Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.” His other selections for OMB leadership posts include anti-abortion activist Ed Martin and Vought’s colleague at the Center for Renewing America, Mark Paoletta, whom the president-elect praised as a “conservative warrior.”
One question as Trump takes office on January 20 and Vought, if confirmed, helps him control the government’s workforce and purse strings, is which version of the country they will promote and whose rights are — and aren’t — protected.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy described the insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political dissidents” during a rant about federal law enforcement on Friday.
Campos-Duffy, who is perhaps best known for appearing on MTV’s “The Real World” in the 1990s, made her claim during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“We have an FBI, a DOD, and a Homeland Security that has given us zero confidence. They've said nothing with a border open and terrorists flowing over the borders. They've been directing agents to go after political dissidents from J6, from January 6, instead of going after terrorists,” Duffy said while commenting on the New Orleans attackerwho was reported to be inspired by ISIS.
Campos-Duffy’s sympathetic description of the insurrections echoes that of Donald Trump, who has floated the idea of pardoning them and has referred to the armed attack as a “day of love.”
In reality, the attackers violently forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from fulfilling one of its longest-running and most important functions: certifying the presidential election results.
At least seven people died as a result of the Jan. 6 attack, a direct contradiction to the casual language that Campos-Duffy used to describe the rioters. More than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection, with some charges including sedition against the United States. In fact, Trump was also charged—and even impeached—for his role in inciting the attack.
Campos-Duffy’s underlying argument that the U.S. government fails to go after terrorists is also faulty. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military executed a drone strike in 2022 that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, alongside Osama bin Laden, led the terrorist group Al Qaeda and assisted in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The drone strike was a continuation of policy from Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation that successfully killed bin Laden in 2011.
Looks like the latest Fox News rant was just that—a rant.
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff, issued a memo Sunday to Trump’s Cabinet nominees ordering them to stop making social media posts without approval ahead of the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.
“All intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,”the memo said, according to the New York Post.
Wiles also noted, “I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself.”
The missive comes after the spectacular flame out of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general and the ongoing controversies of several other nominees, including Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Gaetz’s nomination was withdrawn after the resurfacing of sordid allegations of illicit drug use and sexual behavior, including sending money to multiple women via PayPal and Venmo. Gaetz’s activity on social media was a key part of the controversy, as the House Ethics Committee's report notes.
“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report states.
Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has been accused of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and public drunkenness. In response to reporting on these allegations, Hegseth has taken to social media to complain about “anti-Christian bigotry” in the media, the “lying press”, and the “Left Wing hack group” ProPublica.
Anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has also made strange social media posts. He recently posted a meme on X characterizing the medical industry as “financially dependent on you being sick,” as well as a video of himself with CGI-generated electric eyes and a link to his merchandise site.
An anonymous source with the Trump transition team claimed that the order to stop social media posts is not related to the recent online infighting between Trump megadonor Elon Musk and anti-immigration MAGA supporters. But the timing of the edict, coming directly from Trump’s right-hand woman, is extremely convenient.
Musk recently went on a posting frenzy, calling MAGA fans “upside-down and backwards” in their understanding of immigration issues, while telling one person to “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.”
The controversy generated international headlines, and Trump was dragged into commenting on the discussion—a less-than-ideal situation as he prepares for his inauguration.
Trump of all people telling others to be more mindful about social media posts is an ironic development. Trump made a name for himself as a political figure largely due to constantly posting inflammatory messages online. Most notoriously, he called on his supporters to protest the results of the 2020 election after losing to President Joe Biden.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote.
Winning the 2024 election didn’t just return Donald Trump to power. It also allowed him to dodge multiple criminal cases. And while his unofficial vice president, Elon Musk, didn’t need a Trump win to stay out of jail—at least under any existing charges—the victory likely freed Musk and his companies from regulatory oversight. That’s an exceedingly lucky break for Musk, currently being scrutinized by multiple government agencies for everything from his inflated claims about self-driving Tesla cars to his SpaceX rocket launches polluting wetlands to his purchase of social media platform X—just to name a few.
To be perfectly fair, Trump’s victory means a far friendlier atmosphere for all greedy billionaires who hate regulations, not just Musk personally. But Musk is the one sitting next to Trump at Thanksgiving and the one who threw roughly $260 million at Trump’s campaign while fawning over him on X and in person.
So which pesky investigations and regulations is Musk probably free of now that his bestie is headed to the White House?
For starters, perhaps he’ll get out from under the alphabet soup of agencies looking into Tesla’s so-called full self-driving system, or FSD. Musk has promised a vision of a completely autonomous hands-free Tesla since 2013. It’s not a vision that has ever come true. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has twice required Tesla to recall FSD because of the system’s bad habit of ignoring traffic laws, including being programmed to run stop signs at slow speeds. In October, the agency opened another inquiry after the company reported four crashes, one of which killed a pedestrian, when FSD was used in low-visibility conditions like fog.
The issue isn’t just that FSD is unsafe. It’s also that Tesla hoovered up cash by selling a product that basically doesn’t exist. Tesla owners filed a class-action lawsuit in 2022 alleging the company defrauded them by charging $15,000 for an FSD package that didn’t result in a Tesla being able to drive itself successfully. Tesla’s defense? Full self-driving is merely an aspirational goal, so a failure to provide it isn’t a deliberate fraud—just bad luck. Perhaps that’s the same excuse Tesla would have trotted out in response to the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into whether the company committed wire fraud by deceiving consumers about FSD’s capabilities and securities fraud by deceiving investors.
Trump named former reality show star and former Congressman Sean Duffy to head the Department of Transportation, of which NHTSA is a part, and tapped one of his impeachment defense attorneys, Pam Bondi, to head the DOJ after Matt Gaetz’s nomination flamed out. There’s no reason to think either of these people will grow a spine and continue investigating “first buddy” Elon Musk or Tesla.
Trump’s election also probably gives SpaceX breathing room. Musk’s private space company, which receives literal billions in government money, hasn’t been terribly interested in following government rules.
In September, the Environmental Protection Agency fined SpaceX $148,378 for dumping industrial wastewater and pollutants into wetlands near its Texas launch site. The company paid that fine, albeit with some whining about how it was “disappointing” to pay when it disagreed with the allegations, but it’s planning on challenging the recent $633,000 fine from the Federal Aviation Administration. The regulatory agency proposed the fine after two launches in 2023 where the company allegedly didn’t get FAA approval for launch procedure changes and didn’t follow license requirements.
This isn’t SpaceX’s first run-in with the FAA. The aerospace company paid a $175,000 fine in October 2023 over not submitting required safety data to the agency before a 2022 launch of Starlink satellites. After an April 2023 launch where one of the company’s rockets blew up shortly after takeoff, sending debris over South Texas, the FAA required the agency to make dozens of changes before another launch.
Like the NHTSA, the FAA is part of the Transportation Department. Sean Duffy’s past as an airline industry lobbyist doesn’t inspire confidence that he’ll take a hard line against SpaceX.
And as far as whether the EPA will continue to pose any problems for Musk? Under Trump, that agency will be run by former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, whose primary qualification seems to be hating EPA regulations. He’s voted against replacing lead water pipes and cleaning up brownfields and sees his mission at the EPA as pursuing “energy dominance.” Again, not exactly someone who will bring the hammer down on Musk or his companies.
Musk is also in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the possibility he delayed disclosing his acquisition of Twitter stock in 2022. Investors must disclose when they accumulate 5% of a publicly traded company, a requirement that ostensible super-genius Musk says he misunderstood somehow. Under President Joe Biden, current SEC chair Gary Gensler has aggressively pursued enforcement efforts, a trend in no way expected to continue under whoever Trump picks.
Lightning round! Musk tried hard to violate a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission by giving “Twitter Files” writers improper access to user data, but he was thwarted by Twitter employees who actually followed the order. He’s faced numerous unfair labor practices claims and been investigated multiple times by the National Labor Relations Board, so he’s suing to have the board declared unconstitutional. He lost out on $885 million in government subsidies after the Federal Communications Commission found that Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, couldn’t meet the speed metrics for the government’s rural broadband program.
Luckily for the multibillionaire, the incoming head of the FCC is a pal of Musk’s who thinks it is “regulatory harassment” to require Starlink to meet program requirements.
Musk will also have the advantage of helming a newly invented entity, the cringily titled Department of Government Efficiency (aka DOGE—ugh), that can put his rivals under a microscope. DOGE’s co-head, fellow tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, has already said he’ll examine a government loan to Rivian, a competing electric vehicle manufacturer, calling the loan “a political shot across the bow at Elon Musk and Tesla.” Though DOGE is not an actual department—you need Congress to create one of those—and cannot slash spending directly, Musk could still suggest to Trump that government funding of fiber optic cables in rural areas be gutted. This would leave satellite services like Starlink as the only option for some rural consumers—an option either those consumers or the government would then have to pay for.
Until Trump was elected in 2016, it was impossible to imagine giving billionaires like Musk so much opportunity to use the levers of government to openly and directly benefit themselves. Now that Trump has won a second term in office, Musk is just one of many oligarchs looking forward to an extremely lucrative four years. It’s lucky for them—but terrible for the rest of us.
House Republicans on Tuesday released a report recommending that former Rep. Liz Cheney face criminal charges for her role in the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee.
The interim report comes from the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who previously compared the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The report alleges that the Jan. 6 committee was a “political weapon” against Trump and accuses Cheney of witness tampering. Loudermilk’s allegation revolves around the actions of former Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the committee. Hutchinson said in her testimony that Trump was unconcerned that his supporters were carrying weapons on Jan. 6 and that he wanted to go to the Capitol on the day of the attack.
In the report, texts were revealed between Hutchinson and former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin purportedly discussing a change of lawyers after her Trump-connected lawyer Stefan Passantino was accused of telling Hutchinson to omit damaging details about Trump’s behavior. The Loudermilk report alleges that through her relationship with Griffin, which she used as an intermediary, and her direct contact with Hutchinson, Cheney crossed a legal line.
Trump praised the report on his Truth Social account writing, “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee.” He added, “Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done.”
Rep. Barry Loudermilk,
“Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did,” Cheney said in a statement.
The Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack released a report in December 2022 recommending several criminal charges against Trump for his actions. Trump was charged with election subversion, but special counsel Jack Smith dropped the case after Trump won the election.
The report comes less than two months after Cheney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president and campaigned alongside her, citing the threat Trump represents to democracy. Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders said President Joe Biden should consider a preemptive pardon of officials like Cheney involved in the Jan. 6 committee after Trump called for them to be jailed.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy criticized the Loudermilk report in a social media post, noting that with the nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI, Republicans are pursuing legal retribution against Trump detractors.
“Who will stand in the way of Cheney and others being put in jail? Not DOJ. Kash Patel was chosen to lead the FBI BECAUSE he wants to prosecute Trump's opponents,” Murphy wrote.
Patel is a longtime Trump fan who has previously said the legal system should be used to attack the press for reporting on Trump scandals.
At the same time the House report was released, Trump filed suit against pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for releasing a poll showing him losing to Harris in Iowa. On multiple fronts, Trump is targeting people who dare to say anything negative about him.
Republicans are sucking up to Donald Trump in the best way they know how: by being cowards.
The convicted felon has promised that when he takes office in January, he will pardon Jan. 6 insurrectionists and called for lawmakers who investigated the attempted coup to be punished. And GOP senators and Congress members, most of whom were hunkered down in the Capitol on that terrible day, are lining up to roll over for him.
“As we found from Hunter Biden, the president’s pardon authority is pretty extensive. That’s obviously a decision he’ll have to make,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune told The Hill about Trump’s promised pardons.
“I don’t have a comment really on those statements,” Thune said.
Thune’s timorous stance on pardoning the rioters was parroted by fellow Republican senators.
“We’ll see what he does. I mean it’s been four or five years [since the attack]. The ones that hurt cops, they’d be in a different category for me, but we’ll leave that up to him,” said South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that the Jan. 6 committee destroyed evidence that would exonerate him. He has also publicly fantasized about committee co-chair Cheney facing a firing squad, and House Republicans including Second Amendment apologist Tim Burchett of Tennessee seem fine with Trump’s interest in political witch hunts.
“If they broke the law, then they should [be imprisoned],” Burchett told The Bulwark. “Now we know that they’ve manipulated evidence, so—if that’s the case, then absolutely.”
As always, some Republicans were eager to minimize Trump’s threats.
“It was my understanding that he backed off that statement in a subsequent interview,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins. “So I don’t really think that there’s—since he’s backed off on it, I don’t think there’s really any need for me to comment on it.”
Other GOP leaders cheered Trump’s vendetta on—even if it means targeting their own colleagues.
“With politicians, if you’ve used a congressional committee and you’ve lied and tried to set people up and falsely imprisoned people, then you should be held accountable,” said Rep. James Comer, who is no stranger to using House committees and scant evidence to attack political opponents.
“I haven’t kept up with the January 6th stuff like other people,” Comer told The Bulwark. “I don’t know exactly what Trump was referring to. But I have two years of experience working with one of the January 6th committee members, and I can tell you he’s been nothing but completely dishonest,” Comer said, clearly referring to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Every traitorous revelation from the Jan. 6 committee hearings was terrifying. The nearly 850-page final report by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol illuminating—and damning.
Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell once again sat for an interview in which he crapped all over Donald Trump, warning that the president-elect’s foreign policy ideas pose a danger not only to the United States but to the whole world.
In an interview with the Financial Times, McConnell said Trump and the Republican Party's isolationist views are a threat, as “the cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war."
“To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it.’ That was the argument made in the ’30s and that just won’t work,” McConnell told the Financial Times. “Thanks to [Ronald] Reagan, we know what does work—not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”
Yet in that very same interview, McConnell admitted that he voted for Trump anyway.
“I supported the ticket,” McConnell said, refusing to even utter Trump's name.
What’s more, McConnell declined to say whether he should have done more to stop Trump from becoming president for the second time. McConnell had the chance to prevent Trump from running for president again during the Senate impeachment trial over Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. McConnell voted to acquit Trump, even though he said Trump was responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol that sought to overturn the free and fair election of Joe Biden.
It's not the first time McConnell has spoken ill of Trump. In October, excerpts from a McConnell biography were released in which McConnell called Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being."
Yet despite thinking Trump is an awful person, McConnell endorsed Trump's 2024 comeback as he made those same attacks against the leader of the Republican Party.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support," McConnell said in March.
But McConnell's hypocrisy is not a surprise. Earlier in December, McConnell accused federal judges of playing politics by reneging on their decisions to retire in order to prevent Trump from choosing their replacements. But McConnell wrote the book on playing politics with the courts, as he stole a Supreme Court seat from former President Barack Obama, as well as a number of other judicial seats on lower courts.
While McConnell won’t be part of Senate GOP leadership next year, he is sticking around Capitol Hill. He claimed to the Financial Times that without the constraints of being in leadership, he will now push back on Trump and his own party’s isolationist policies.
“No matter who got elected president, I think it was going to require significant pushback, yeah, and I intend to be one of the pushers,” McConnell said.
But given that he’s always capitulated to Trump, color us skeptical.
On Sunday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sycophant to President-elect Donald Trump, praised Trump's push to end birthright citizenship.
“We are one of a handful of countries in the world that allows birthright citizenship,” Graham said in his post. “If you’re born in the United States, you’re automatically an American citizen. This and birth tourism from developed countries like China have become one of the biggest magnets for illegal immigration.”
“I have introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship, and I’m now working on a constitutional amendment to put an end to this practice once and for all,” Graham added.
To end birthright citizenship would mean amending the U.S. Constitution, whose 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States.” For a new constitutional amendment to take effect, it needs to be passed by a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber of Congress as well as ratified by 38 of 50 state legislatures.
Graham’s comments followed Trump’s Sunday appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” where he declared he would move to end birthright citizenship.
“We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous,” Trump said in the interview. “We’re the only country that has it, you know.”
Trump’s claim that America is the only country with birthright citizenship is false. More than 30 countries have it, according to a 2018 report by the Library of Congress. However, that mattered little to Graham, who was focused on how it “cheapens” American citizenship.
"I believe legal immigration is important to our economy and future," Graham continued. "However, birthright citizenship and birth tourism … cheapen American citizenship."
He concluded with his usual flair: "I look forward to working with President Trump to go beyond his executive order and end this disastrous policy once and for all."
Such a move would directly challenge the landmark 1868 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which upheld the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of full citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parent's immigration or citizenship status.
Graham has long advocated for ending birthright citizenship. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he said, “Finally, a president willing to take on this absurd policy of birthright citizenship. And in a series of posts railing against the constitutionally protected right, he declared his plans to introduce legislation in the Senate.
“This legislation will change the laws that exist today,” he said in a press conference announcing his bill, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2024. “There’s an 1898 Supreme Court ruling that basically suggested that if you’re born in America, you’re automatically a citizen. I do not believe that is a sound policy to have, and the Supreme Court will revisit this if challenged.”
This push to end birthright citizenship comes on the heels of a 2020 Trump administration policy that sought to curb “birth tourism”—a purported practice where foreign nationals travel to the U.S. to give birth, hoping their child will be granted American citizenship. Through the State Department, the Trump administration restricted access to temporary visitor visas for foreign nationals hoping to give birth on American soil, though the administration didn’t provide a clear explanation of how it might know the intentions of pregnant travelers. (It also exempted 39 countries, most in Europe, from the rule.)
Graham’s relationship with Trump has been, to put it mildly, a rollercoaster.
In 2015, amid the Republican presidential primary, Graham called Trump a “jackass,” and Trump called Graham an “idiot.”
Eventually, Graham and Trump developed a friendship over their shared disdain for the Affordable Care Act. Since Trump’s first term, Graham has often aligned himself with Trump, from calling Trump’s impeachment hearings a witch hunt, to publicly defending Trump in the media.
However, earlier this year, the relationship hit a rough patch after Trump reportedly refused to back a federal abortion ban, leading to some reported tension between the two. Yet Graham has remained a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration policy—one of the agendas that swayed American voters to catapult him back into the White House.
By challenging the 14th Amendment, Graham and Trump are not just targeting immigration policy—they’re aiming to rewrite what it means to be an American.
Donald Trump proposed on Saturday that current FBI Director Christopher Wray be replaced by pro-Trump loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel. Wray was appointed by Trump in 2017 and is slated to serve a 10-year term which would end in 2027. Replacing him ahead of time would require Wray to voluntarily retire or for Trump to fire him once he becomes president.
Some Republicans have already expressed skepticism about replacing Wray. South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said on ABC’s “This Week” that he had not heard complaints about Wray’s leadership of the law enforcement agency.
“The message, and one that I feel very strongly about, is that there is a constitutional separation. The Founding Fathers did that for a reason,” Rounds told the network.
Even though Wray was originally Trump’s pick, Trump has frequently complained that the FBI director has followed the law and authorized investigations into criminal behavior by Trump, his team, and pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Patel is a Trump devotee who previously worked as a DOJ prosecutor, exaggerating his role by claiming to be the “lead prosecutor” on the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Patel was actually a junior staffer on the team. He went on to work as an aide for former Rep. Devin Nunes, who now heads Trump Media & Technology Group.
In his role with Nunes, Patel fed Trump backchannel information on Ukraine that contributed to Trump’s plot to push that nation to help him smear his political opponents. Trump’s first impeachment was over his misuse of office in this effort. Trump rewarded Patel with jobs in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and in the Pentagon.
During this time, Patel authored a memo arguing that it was disloyal for then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper to oppose a request by Trump to deploy military troops against American citizens protesting police violence against Black people.
After Trump lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, Patel pushed lies about the election being stolen and argued that reporters debunking Trump’s election lies should be targeted by the government.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you,” Patel said in an interview last year with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser.
Patel has authored three children’s books that are pro-Trump fan fiction.
“The Plot Against the King” is described by the publisher as a “fantastical retelling of Hillary’s horrible plot against Trump” and features a character named “Kash the Distinguished Discoverer” defending King Donald Trump.
The second book, “The Plot Against the King: 2,000 Mules,” is a fictionalized version of pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked lies about the 2020 election being stolen. The blurb details a “terrible scheme to elect Sleepy Joe instead of King Donald on Choosing Day.”
In “The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King,” the story is about the “Journey of the MAGA King as he returns to take down Comma-la-la-la and reclaim his throne.”
These books are authored by the person who Trump wants to lead the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, responsible for the safety and security of hundreds of millions of people.
