Author name: moderat ereport

Joan Walsh Trump’s bizarre claim that he fell out with the indicted child sex trafficker because Epstein “stole” workers from Mar-a-Lago only raises more lurid questions. The post Keep Digging, Donald. You’re Keeping the Epstein Scandal Alive. appeared first on The Nation.

President Donald Trump’s nightmare-inducing “border czar” Tom Homan appeared on Newsmax Tuesday morning to defend the unpopular and authoritarian deportation tactics carried out by his Immigration and Customs Enforcement shock troops. When asked about reports that many immigrants detained by ICE have no criminal records, Homan provided evidence-free statistics while openly admitting to the mass arrests of innocent people. “Here’s what the numbers look like. For those we arrest, 70%, approximately 70%—seven-zero percent—of those we arrest are criminals. Who’s the other 30%? The other 30% are national security threats. Most national security threats don’t have a criminal history. They try to lay low until it’s time for them to do things bad,” he said. YouTube Video In other words, Homan is admitting that ICE arrests people who haven’t committed any crimes because they might in the future—including teenagers and children. That is about as dystopian as it gets.  Meanwhile, Homan’s numbers don’t align with any credible data. ICE’s own incomplete public-facing statistics don’t support his claim. According to CBS News, ICE detained around 100,000 people during Trump’s first 5 months in office, and only 8% have been convicted of a violent crime. And according to an analysis by the CATO Institute, 65% of people detained had no convictions whatsoever. Trump’s campaign fantasy of mass deportations of violent offenders has collapsed under scrutiny. At the same time, Homan and other bigoted GOP officials have turned to performative crackdowns—terrorizing immigrants in their neighborhoods, at work, and in court. Along with alleged deportation quotas that have nothing to do with national security, Trump and the GOP have allocated billions of dollars toward building immigrant detention infrastructure, promising more despotic roundups. But Trump’s failures are mounting. What was once his signature issue is quickly becoming a symbol of failure, with polls indicating that Americans are increasingly disillusioned by the results of his jackbooted authoritarianism.

 As Americans prepare to deal with price hikes caused by President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, one of his strongest allies in the Senate is proposing legislation that appears to be designed to silence criticism of the administration’s unpopular policies—with a financial payoff. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri on Monday introduced legislation that would provide a “rebate” check to Americans, taken from the revenue that is being paid for tariffs. Hawley’s bill would purportedly provide a check of “at least $600 per adult” and dependent child this year, so $2,400 for a family of four. “MAGA tariff” by Clay Jones That would be far less than the cost of $4,600 per family that the Center for American Progress estimated in April that each family would have to pay out for the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Hawley said in a release that the legislation is based on an idea floated by Trump himself. Trump and other Republicans have constantly portrayed tariffs as something that foreign governments and companies pay to the United States without a downside for the public. But this is not true. Tariff costs are historically passed on to consumers, who pay more for goods to make up the extra costs for producers. For instance, the recently announced framework of a trade deal between the European Union and United States that Trump touted over the weekend will increase many tariffs from 1.2% to 15%. Much of those costs are likely to be passed on to consumers, who will pay more for goods. Already it is being reported that pharmaceutical manufacturers are set to increase the costs of their medication because of the new tariffs. That will cause a ripple effect, as insurance companies increase their premiums to cover the new, more expensive, medication. The cost of candy has already gone up under Trump, with tariffs increasing the costs of cocoa used in products like Kit Kat bars produced by food giant Nestle. In his statement, Hawley expressed support for Trump’s tariff policies, which then gives the rebate the appearance of a payoff to suppress backlash to the rising cost of consumer goods. But the public has already made it clear they don’t like what Trump and Hawley are offering. In a Fox News poll taken between July 18-21, Trump only received 36% support for his handling of the tariff issue, with 62% disapproving. Such anemic support before most of the elevated tariff costs have taken effect does not bode well. And a payoff that doesn’t cover the costs of Trump’s hike seems unlikely to help improve those sentiments. 

A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | The cost of medication is about to skyrocket thanks to Trump

Gather ’round, children, while we read the amazing motion that President Donald Trump filed in his suit against The Wall Street Journal over their story about Trump’s coziness with convicted dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The gist of it is that even though Trump only filed his lawsuit against the paper 10 days before demanding this, he needs to depose media mogul Rupert Murdoch with a quickness, before Murdoch shuffles off this mortal coil.  Generally, discovery in a federal case doesn’t start until the parties have a Rule 26(f) conference, where they must confer about discovery and create a proposed discovery plan. That conference doesn’t happen until after a defendant has filed an answer to the complaint, which hasn’t happened here. In fact, Trump didn’t oppose the Journal’s request to delay answering the complaint until Sept. 22, 2025, but then turned around and filed this thing.  “Stepped in it” by Clay Bennett So, back to Murdoch. Is there any particular reason to believe that Murdoch will be dead before this case either hits the discovery stage or The Wall Street Journal caves like so many media companies before it? Well, per Trump’s filing, it’s because he is old, old, old.  Here’s the rundown on walking corpse Murdoch. He fainted at breakfast a few months ago, he was hospitalized for COVID-19 in 2022, in the last five years he broke his back, had seizures, had pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon. Yeah, those torn tendons are a literal killer for sure. Also, Rupert is 94 and lives in New York. All of this, for Trump, adds up to justification to demand a deposition and production of documents months before he is entitled to it. Murdoch is either going to die or be too frail to go to Miami, where Trump filed this case.  It’s not just that Murdoch is going to die. It’s also that he’s much more powerful and has a huge advantage over Trump. This is Trump in full beleaguered dual role: on the one hand, he’s the president, so how dare you! On the other hand, he’s just a small bean who is at an incredible disadvantage against the might of The Wall Street Journal: Murdoch is able to defend himself because he has access to all the information and documents related to the below-defined malicious and defamatory Article, and the decision behind deciding to publish it. On the other hand, President Trump has very limited information related to the Article. Besides being nonsense vis-a-vis the alleged power imbalance, this is also nonsense legally. Of course Murdoch knows more about what happened at The Wall Street Journal than Trump does. But that’s true in every lawsuit like this, not a reason to get a jumpstart on discovery before the other side has even answered the complaint.   But wait, there’s more. According to Trump, it’s not just that he’s the underdog here. It’s also that this helps Murdoch: Timing of the deposition benefits Murdoch. Because discovery has not yet begun, Murdoch has an advantage over President Trump to defend himself in his deposition. On the one hand, Murdoch has access to all the information related to the Article and the decision behind publishing it. On the other hand, President Trump has very limited information related to the Article and lacks the same access to information that Murdoch does. Trump isn’t just demanding Murdoch sit for a deposition. He also wants a ton of documents turned over in discovery—again, not a thing that one gets to do 10 days after filing a lawsuit. According to Trump, however, it’s cool, because he’s not asking for much. Just all the documents about the article, any text messages or WhatsApp or Slack or any other digital messages about the article, and a log of all calls Murdoch made or received about the article. This is literally the opposite of how it works. No defendant is clamoring to be deposed long before they’ve answered the complaint or agreed on the scope of discovery. No one is going to give up all these documents so Trump can go on a fishing expedition. Rather, this is Trump trying to wring information out of Murdoch before having to do the heavy lifting of actually pursuing this lawsuit rather than hoping for a multimillion dollar payout.  Trump also uses this time to reiterate all his grievances about the paper’s coverage of his ties with Epstein and his very unique theory of defamation. Trump says that because he called Murdoch to personally demand he kill the story because Trump said it was false and, per Trump, Murdoch said he would “take care of it,” that means that the Journal published the piece knowing it was fake:  Because Defendants published the Article after President Trump spoke directly with Murdoch and advised him that the letter referenced in the Article was fake, Murdoch’s direct involvement further underscores Defendants’ actual malice and intent behind the decision to publish the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements about President Trump identified in the Complaint. This is not how defamation works. You don’t get to just say “well, I said it wasn’t true, so now it’s defamatory if you publish it” and win the day. Otherwise it would be near-impossible to prevail in a defamation suit against an inveterate liar like Trump.  The lawyer behind this bit of sparkling prose is Alejandro Brito, who is Trump’s go-to guy for  frivolous suits against media companies. It would normally result in sanctions for him and consequences for his clients, but since those companies just keep caving, no harm done.  Trump’s demand in the lawsuit is his usual inflated nonsense—The Wall Street Journal owes him $10 billion for defaming him. But let’s face it—what he’s really angling for is the standard bribe of $16 million or so, along with a tacit agreement that the Journal won’t say bad things about Trump ever again, or they’ll face another lawsuit.  But maybe, just maybe, the Journal will

When the Office of Personnel Management isn’t busy overseeing mass firings, it’s busy figuring out ways to force a very narrow, very conservative version of Christianity on those federal employees it hasn’t yet sacked. OPM’s latest guidance to all agency heads, titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Workplace,” is a permission slip for evangelicals to foist their religious views on everyone else. That’s not an exaggeration. The memo explicitly says it: “An employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs. However, if the nonadherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request.” Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services on Feb. 14 in Washington. Who doesn’t love the idea of going to work at a shattered, decimated government agency only to be buttonholed by an evangelical weirdo telling them their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are wrong? Totally what everyone wants from their job, and not at all entangling church and state.  Bosses can get in on the action too. A supervisor can post a message inviting “each of his employees to attend an Easter service at his church.” Supervisors are also welcome to do the whole bit about telling employees their views are wrong and why they should “re-think” their religious beliefs. Surely no non-Christian employee will feel at all coerced by having their boss tell them they should convert.  What other cool things can happen in Donald Trump’s brave new world? A park ranger can pray with a tour group. Veterans’ Affairs doctors can pray over patients. Security guards and other front-facing employees can cover their desks with crucifixes, a Bible, or rosary beads. It’s unclear how this doesn’t look, to a member of the public, like official government endorsement of Christianity.  And it really is just Christianity. There’s no mention of, say, having the Quran or a Tibetan prayer bowl on that imaginary security guard’s desk. Somehow, all of this is actually about “restoring constitutional freedoms,” per OPM director Scott Kupor, who is making it his mission to smash the remaining barriers between church (Christian only, thanks!) and state. This isn’t even the first religious liberty memo Kupor has issued since taking the reins at the OPM two weeks ago. On his first day on the job, he issued a memo all about how federal employers have to allow religious people—but only religious people—to telework, get comp time, have flexible schedules, and time off for travel in order to adhere to their religious beliefs. Anyone else who wants to telework is a lazy sod who should be fired, however. Related | Telework is fine in Trump’s America, but only for this group It’s not just Kupor or OPM. The Trump administration is committed to reframing religious freedom as the freedom to impose religion on others, not the right to be free of religious coercion by the government. So we have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth leading prayer services at the Pentagon and Trump’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias,” which the Baptist News even characterized as “an exercise in airing conservative evangelical grievances.” At the same time, the administration is actively hostile to people whose faith compels them to show care to others. Trump greenlit efforts to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrest people in churches and continues to relentlessly fight religious groups who sued on the basis that it burdens their free expression of religion to have ICE goons stomp into their places of worship. Per the administration, that’s fine because it’s not at all coercive and totally wouldn’t cause people who fear arrest not to attend church or require faith leaders to compromise their faith by not sheltering immigrants.  Except that’s exactly what is happening. Two Catholic bishops have already issued dispensations, telling people they do not have to attend Mass if they fear harm over the possibility of immigration raids. Bishop Alberto Rojas of the San Bernardino diocese, about an hour away from Los Angeles, has pleaded with the administration to stop terrorizing people, saying.  “Please reconsider and cease these tactics immediately, in favor of an approach that respects human rights and human dignity,” Rojas pleaded. Somehow, there’s no religious freedom to oppose violent immigration raids, but the hypothetical boss who wants to corner you in the break room to tell you the good news about Jesus Christ is the pinnacle of that freedom.  Don’t expect federal workers to be able to sue to stop this, given that anything that hits the Supreme Court docket will likely lead to a Trump-friendly conservative majority enthusiastically endorsing the government’s right to force religion on you at work. The court has steadily, relentlessly eroded the boundary between church and state, and doesn’t appear to have any intention of stopping.  Let’s hope federal employees enjoy having their offices draped in crucifixes and a boss who won’t stop talking about how you need to come to their megachurch and get saved. 

President Donald Trump’s $10 million taxpayer-funded trip to Scotland has so far included railing against windmills, playing golf, and promoting the grand opening of yet another Trump-owned golf course. Oh, and Trump is also making dubious claims that he’s ended tons of global conflicts. “We put out fires all over the world. We did one yesterday, as you know, we stopped a war, but we stopped about five wars,” Trump said, while standing on a golf green, Tuesday. “So that’s ah, much more important than playing golf. As much as I like it, it’s much more important.” YouTube Video The war that Trump claims to have recently stopped seems to be a ceasefire agreement between Thailand and Cambodia, brokered in Malaysia with diplomatic involvement from both the United States and China.  In reality, one would be hard-pressed to find evidence to support any of Trump’s claims. His promise to end the invasion of Ukraine by Russia “on Day One,” has long since been abandoned, largely due to his inability to figure out how to appease his idol Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and stop the war simultaneously. The Israel-Hamas war rages on, and the fighting between Israel and Iran is likely escalating, and according to reports, entering a new and more dangerous phase. At the same time, data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data shows that during Trump’s first five months back in office the U.S. has carried out 529 air attacks in 240 locations across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly as many as were launched during the entirety of the previous Biden administration, which totaled 555. And let’s not even get into how Trump’s tariffs have launched global trade wars. The Trump administration seems to have read George Orwell’s “1984.” 

Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent took time away from fantasizing that President Donald Trump is “economically sophisticated” to tout his boss’ supposed trade deals, many of which definitely, absolutely exist. In a Tuesday interview with CNBC’s Eamon Javers, Bessent was asked whether he had seen any formal documentation that Trump has boasted about. Bessent could not say he had. JAVERS: Did we get confirmation from the Vietnamese government? Do we have an agreement with them on paper? BESSENT: I didn’t work on that deal, but I assume that we do, because we have also done Indonesia and Philippines, so I would imagine that— JAVERS: But you haven’t seen that paperwork? BESSENT: But I don’t—that’s—Ambassador [Jamieson] Greer, who is a seasoned veteran with an encyclopedic memory and knowledge of all this, keeps all that. YouTube Video Since the start of Trump’s erratic, self-defeating trade war, every deal that has come to fruition has also come with a projection of higher costs in the U.S. Whether it is the rising prescription drug costs or burdens for the U.S. auto industry, America’s economy is beginning to feel the effects of Trump’s mad-king approach. The tariffs, along with the GOP’s law that slashes Medicaid in order to cut taxes for the rich, has them scrambling. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is hoping that a meager rebate check will cushion the blow of Trump’s tariffs. But like most GOP efforts, Hawley’s proposed rebate falls far short of covering the real economic pain most families are about to face.

Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples way back in 2015, is continuing to press her case, turning up like a bad penny again and again. This time, it’s begging the Supreme Court to hear her cry, oh, and also to entirely overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and get rid of the right to same-sex marriage. In a normal world, this would be absurd. Demanding that the court overturn a precedent that is only ten years old because a random conservative court clerk is sad should be met with a swift refusal to grant certiorari—but we don’t have a normal court. We have a court dominated by conservative Christians who love overturning precedents and also love giving conservative Christians power over everyone else when it comes to their dislike of the gays. So, Davis’ invitation to the court to overturn Obergefell may, unfortunately, have legs. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, left, and Clarence Thomas  Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have already explicitly called for the court to “reconsider” Obergefell. Alito has been whining about this for years. In a 2020 speech to the Federalist Society, he complained that people who have “traditional views on marriage” could be “labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” He’s continued to fret about how, if same-sex marriage is legal, bigots will be sad, so we need to get rid of it.  When the court declined one of Davis’ previous attempts to have her homophobic beliefs enshrined into law back in 2020, Thomas and Alito decided that was a great time to go off, saying that “Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision.” In 2024, when the court declined to hear a case about people being removed from a jury because they were opposed to same-sex relationships, Alito again trotted out the “danger” of Obergefell.  Both Thomas and Alito are chomping at the bit to get rid of same-sex marriage, and Davis knows it. Her petition to the court starts by quoting Thomas’ statement when the court turned her away in 2020, about how Obergefell “threaten[s] the religious liberty of many Americans who believe marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman.” It then dramatically winds through Davis’ ten-year saga of trying to undo same-sex marriage.  That’s always been Davis’ goal here. Ostensibly, she only wanted the state to remove clerk names entirely from marriage licenses, so her name would never be sullied by appearing on a marriage license for two dudes or two ladies. She achieved that not long after her refusal to issue licenses, as Kentucky then-Gov. Matt Bevin issued an executive order in December 2015 removing clerk names from licenses.  But since what she wants is the eradication of same-sex marriage, Davis is still going. Sure, she also wants to get out from under the damages and attorney fees she was ordered to pay in a lawsuit filed by one of the couples she refused to issue a marriage license for, but that’s a side quest. Thousands of people gathered at the Minnesota state capitol building during the Minnesota Senate debate on a same sex marriage bill in 2013.  Davis is represented by Liberty Counsel, which has devoted itself to eradicating same-sex marriage and any other rights LGBTQ+ people might wish to enjoy. Liberty Counsel members have prayed with the sitting justices inside the Supreme Court, which should be a catastrophic scandal, especially as, at the time, Liberty Counsel had an amicus brief urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver said this was entirely untrue. However, Rob Schenck, a former Christian nationalist who founded Faith and Action, which was folded into Liberty Counsel in 2018, said that he held prayer sessions with conservative judges inside their chambers for two decades.  Schenck has described how Faith and Action developed a specific plan to woo the court. The group trained rich couples to approach Justices Thomas, Alito, and Antonin Scalia, giving them fancy meals and trips while also offering prayers and Bibles. He also leveraged the Supreme Court Historical Society as a way to get big conservative religious donors in front of the justices.  Now, we all get to play the waiting game and see if the court’s conservatives see Davis’ latest attempt as a good way to overturn Obergefell. They are certainly primed to keep declaring that LGBTQ+ people have no civil rights if religious conservatives don’t want them to.  Last term, the majority simultaneously held that parents have no right to ensure their child gets gender-affirming care, but parents who don’t want their children exposed to any books about LGBTQ+ people need a special opt-out provision so that never happens. They carved out a special rule for businesses that refuse to work with same-sex couples even though, as a place of public accommodation, they are required to serve everyone.  It’s so cool to have civil rights in the hands of six hard-right religious appointees who have expressed open hostility to same-sex marriage.  Lower courts have held the line on Davis, repeatedly rejecting her attempts to get out from under the damages she has been ordered to pay. But since the Supreme Court has made clear that it doesn’t care at all what lower courts think, who knows what they will do here, but it’s probably bad.