Politics

The Department of Justice filed a consolidated response on Monday night to former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ challenges to the wildly illegal and totally comical appointment of Lindsey Halligan, America’s favorite former real estate lawyer, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey and James have challenged Halligan’s latest gig because she was shuffled into her U.S. attorney spot through the same sorts of ridiculous appointment contortions courts have already ruled were not valid.  Not just one court: Looking at you, Alina Habba in New Jersey. Not just two courts: Looking at you, Sigal Chattah in Nevada But three courts and counting: Looking at you, Bill Essayli in the Middle District of California. But, a-ha! Attorney General Pam Bondi has a trick up her sleeve, which boils down to “Haha, suckers! You challenged Halligan’s appointment as an interim U.S. attorney? Well, check out this order I wrote on Halloween that says Halligan is also a ‘Special Attorney’!! Betcha didn’t think of that!” Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks in the briefing room of the White House as President Donald Trump looks on. Yes, the DOJ filed with the court an order to nobody, allegedly written by Bondi on Oct. 31, where she retroactively appointed Halligan to her new special attorney role, effective back on Sept. 22, and claims that this ratified Halligan’s appointment “as an attorney of the Department of Justice going forward.” And, since Bondi can always appoint a special attorney to do whatever she wants, then it was totally fine, cool, and good that Halligan indicted Comey and James, because she was magically doing it as a special attorney. Retroactively.  Bondi’s rationale is that she has the power to appoint anyone she wants as a special attorney, in whatever role she wants. So, by making Halligan a special attorney retroactively, even if the court were to rule that Halligan was not legally in her role as interim U.S. attorney, then Bondi can appoint Halligan in a limited capacity, where she is handling only two cases—the prosecutions of both Comey and James.  Also according to Bondi, she reviewed the grand jury proceedings in both cases and then exercised the authority vested in her by law to “ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments returned by the grand jury in each case.” Psych! Didn’t see that coming, didja? Since Comey and James are both arguing that their indictments are invalid because they were signed by Halligan, Bondi has now magically also signed them. Retroactively.  Law and Crime called this “one simple trick” to save the flailing prosecutions, but it’s really more “one weird trick,” the legal equivalent of skeevy ads you see at the bottom of tacky news sites offering a cure for toenail fungus that somehow involves a banana peel.  Bondi also says that even if Halligan gets tossed, her terrific work in getting those indictments shouldn’t get thrown out, as that is not an “appropriate remedy for “what is at most a procedural misstep.” Now, if the DOJ had a shred of credibility, it would have to disclose that this is the same approach Bondi tried to save Alina Habba’s gig as acting attorney for the district of New Jersey, and we know that didn’t work out so well there. Related | Whoopsie, Alina Habba isn’t legal Also, Halligan’s appointment wasn’t a procedural misstep or some minor thing like a wrong date on a document. Halligan’s appointment was the result of the president of the United States demanding, via what he thought was a DM but was very much not, that Bondi install Halligan so she would prosecute his enemies.  Then, Trump fired Eric Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Then, Bondi appointed Halligan via the same shady mechanism courts had already ruled against. Then Halligan secured indictments before the grand jury, somehow only a few days after getting appointed. That’s not a procedural misstep.  One more thing, you rubes. Bondi says it’s no problem that Halligan signed those indictments solo, because even if she wasn’t the interim U.S. attorney, her role as a random DOJ attorney “can present a case to a grand jury or sign an indictment, and the Attorney General plainly possessed and exercised the authority to make Ms. Halligan a government attorney, as the Attorney General has now confirmed.” This is, of course, ridiculous. Bondi’s statement essentially means that any junior prosecutor anywhere in the DOJ and U.S. attorney offices is fully empowered to present anything they want to a grand jury and sign an indictment. If that were the case, a line-level prosecutor could head into a friendly Washington, D.C., grand jury and get them to indict Pam Bondi, and somehow the DOJ would then just throw up its hands and say “Welp, you got us! Anyone can bring charges!” Bondi bringing up her review of the grand jury proceedings may not have been the shrewdest move, given that one of Comey’s flurry of motions seeks to unseal the grand jury proceedings because of “Ms. Halligan’s likely motive to obtain an indictment to satisfy the President’s demands, the inaccuracies in the indictment, and the determination of every career prosecutor to consider the case that charges were not warranted.” As much as the Trump administration has scrambled to save Habba, Chattah, and Essayli, they’re going to throw far more effort at saving Halligan. She’s there specifically for Trump to exact revenge on Comey and James, and the DOJ is not going to let up.  Related | Trump team faces critical shortage of morally flexible lawyers

The revelation that Donald Trump has demolished the East Wing, with plans to rebuild it at jumbo size with private funds, provoked an initial wave of outrage—followed by a predictable counter-wave of pseudo-sophisticated qualified defenses. “In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible,” editorializes The Washington Post. The New York Times’ Ross Douthat and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have similar assessments: We should all calm down, put aside our feelings about the president and the admittedly flawed process by which he arrived at this project, and appreciate the practical value of the new facility. Let’s forget questions of proportion and aesthetics (I could not be less qualified to judge either) and consider the matter solely on the issue of corruption. Trump has funded the project by soliciting donors who have potential or actual business before the government. By traditional standards, this would constitute a massive scandal. We know this because a very similar scandal occurred about a decade ago. Remember the Clinton Foundation? After the 43rd president left office, he established a charitable foundation to undertake good works: disaster relief, public health, and other largely uncontroversial endeavors. But the Clinton Foundation became a political liability after reports suggested that it created a potential conflict of interest. Bill Clinton may have retired from elected office, but Hillary Clinton harbored widely known ambitions to run in the future. So the wealthy people and companies that donated to the foundation might have been hoping for access to and gratitude from a potential future president. [Conor Friedersdorf: Donald Trump thinks America needs a better ballroom] Conservatives were not alone in denouncing this arrangement. In August 2016, the Post editorialized that “some donors to the Clinton Foundation may have seen their gifts as means to buy access—and it points to much bigger potential problems. Should Ms. Clinton win in November, she will bring to the Oval Office a web of connections and potential conflicts of interest, developed over decades in private, public and, in the case of her family’s philanthropic work, quasi-public activities.” Similar criticism appeared from the likes of NPR (“I think it contributes to all of the concern about her honesty and trustworthiness,” observed the now-late Cokie Roberts), the Times’ editorial board, me, and others. Like pretty much any other pre-Trump complaint, all of this sounds quaint today. But the actual facts of the case are at least as damning. The solicitations for the $300 million ballroom (as of press time—the cost keeps rising) are being made not by a candidate but by a sitting president. The money is going not to charity but to a public project that will, in part, underwrite Trump’s luxurious lifestyle. (Imagine if the Clinton Foundation had been building gold-embossed ballrooms for Bill and Hillary to entertain guests in!) While the Clinton Foundation disclosed all its donors, Trump has kept many of his ballroom donors secret. The greatest difference is that Trump’s moves to benefit his friends and hurt his enemies are out in the open, which makes the quid pro quo element far cruder. If donating to a Clinton charity was like buying your date a nice dinner in the hopes of getting lucky, donating to a Trump charity is more like bringing a fistful of cash to a brothel. The Clintons’ conflict of interest drove waves of skeptical coverage and hostile commentary. This concern has yielded barely a footnote in the Trump-ballroom story. The Post brushes off the problem in a clause (“Though the fundraising for the ballroom creates problematic conflicts of interest, two examples validate Trump’s aggressive approach”), later noting, almost in passing, that the donors include the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Douthat and the Journal’s editorial page likewise dispense with the conflict issue in a sentence. It may well be true that concerns about the corrupting effect of these donations are just too slight against the backdrop of a presidency that has obliterated the wall between public policy and personal gain. I will concede that the East Wing demolition is not the worst thing Trump has done. It may not even rank among the top 1,000 worst things he’s done. [David A. Graham: It’s already different] But the fact that one of the biggest scandals of the Clintons’ careers hardly warrants a harrumph now shows how low the standards of behavior have fallen in Trump’s Washington. I sympathize with the mainstream media’s inability to properly capture the breadth of Trump’s misconduct. The dilemma is that holding Trump to the standards of a normal politician is impossible. The Times would have to run half a dozen banner-style Watergate-style headlines every day, and the news networks would have to break into regular programming with breathless updates every minute or so. Maxing out the scale of outrage has the paradoxical benefit of allowing Trump to enjoy more generous standards than any other politician has. Still, although holding Trump accountable to normal expectations of political decorum may be impossible, surely we don’t need to praise him for merely committing normal-size scandals. The people losing perspective here are not the ballroom’s critics, but its defenders.

Doing anything that tries to stop people from voting is undemocratic. On election day in 2024, bomb threats were made against polling places in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin. NPR reported in 2024: U.S. intelligence officials said the threats appeared to originate from Russian email domains, though it was not clear whether the threats originated with Russia. Intelligence officials had previously said they were “observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.” Bomb threats are one way to destabilize democracy and make people fearful of showing up to vote. PoliticusUSA’s news and opinions are 100% independent. Support us by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now They have also become more prevalent in Donald Trump’s America, when Putin knows that he has total freedom to meddle in US elections, because Trump has gutted American defenses against foreign election interference, so the door is wide open. The difference is that the states are stepping up to fill the void and keep America’s elections safe and secure. With high-profile elections in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, and California, it is not surprising that those who wish to undermine US democracy, adversaries both potentially foreign and domestic, are up to their now old tricks in 2025. Just like in 2024, bomb threats were emailed to polling places. This time, the target was northern New Jersey, but the state was ready for the threats. Story continues below. Read more

The Trump administration over the weekend fired Steven Hatfill, a senior advisor to the administration who opposed the COVID-19 vaccines and promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed to The Hill that Hatfill had been fired for cause, not providing any further details. Hatfill’s firing…

Alyssa Oursler Kristi Noem visited the Twin Cities and decried out-of-control crime. Is a federal occupation next? The post Minneapolis Braces Itself for the National Guard appeared first on The Nation.

President Donald Trump has long been loyal to UFC and the manosphere that surrounds it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll do the same for him.  Last Friday, Bryce Mitchell, a 31-year-old MMA fighter, took a hard turn away from Trump, whom Mitchell previously said he would “take a bullet” for. Now, Mitchell thinks Trump is the “anti-Christ.” “I don’t support him, I don’t like him, I think he’s a corrupted leader, and yeah, it took me a while to come to that conclusion, but I finally am coming to it,” he said in a video posted to Instagram. Similar to others who had once supported Trump, Mitchell said he initially soured on the president after he refused to release the government’s files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. “They’re sending Israel and Ukraine all of our tax dollars, just like the numbnuts before him did,” Mitchell added, denouncing Trump for “blaming the beef farmers for the price of beef.” Turns out, Trump couldn’t clear even Mitchell’s low moral bar.  Earlier this year, the Arkansas-born fighter called Adolf Hitler a “good guy” on his podcast, where he also denied the Holocaust and made several antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ remarks. In response to that, UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime buddy of Trump, called Mitchell one of the “literally one of the dumbest human beings.” But young men—and the stars they look up to—have already been creating space between the man they slapped a red hat on for just last year.  Joe Rogan is seen at the ceremonial weigh-in for the UFC 292 mixed martial arts event in 2023. Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host and UFC commentator, is also criticizing the president he defended in the past.  Earlier this month, Rogan called out the inhumane treatment of immigrants coming out of Trump’s mass deportation efforts.  “Everybody who has a heart sees that and go[es], ‘That can’t be right,’” he said on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “Have a fucking heart,” he added, criticizing Trump for deporting immigrants who have contributed to the society “for 20 years.” Theo Von, a podcast host and UFC fanatic who attended Trump’s inauguration, wasn’t happy when his face was associated with the administration.  Last month, Von requested that the Department of Homeland Security remove a video on social media in which they used him to promote their deportation efforts.  “Heard you got deported, dude—bye!” Von said in the now-deleted video, which the Trump administration took out of context from a previously recorded clip of Von. Responding, Von wrote in a deleted tweet, “Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this.” “I know you know my address so send a check,” he continued. “And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!” Trump’s young voters are also turning against him. In August, the Pew Research Center found that Trump’s approval rating among Trump voters ages 18-34 had declined from 92% in February to 69% in August. Datawrapper Content This loss of favor could have to do with plenty of things. It’s possible these voters, similarly to Von and Rogan, are not on board with the administration targeting more than just the hardened, dangerous criminals they promised to remove from the country.  Then again, it could also be the deepening of Trump’s own pockets through shady deals with his own Department of Justice.  But if that doesn’t do it, maybe it’s the continued suffering and struggling of the middle and lower classes to pay for groceries as food benefits freeze, prices rise, and the rich get richer.  Don’t worry, though. At least Trump and the bros left within his manosphere—including racist UFC fighter Conor McGregor—will be hosting their own bloodbath on the White House lawn to make up for it.

Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has said that he lives “rent-free” in Donald Trump’s head. He also lives part-time in the official governor’s mansion in Springfield. “It’s the largest governor’s mansion in the country,” Pritzker told me when I met him in Chicago late Friday afternoon. His wife, M. K. Pritzker, oversaw a major redecoration of the 16-room, Italian-style manor after her husband was first elected, in 2018. The governor raves about the job she did. But does it have a ballroom? I asked. Pritzker declared this to be a “funny question.” No, he told me, although there is a “large gathering place.” “Do we call it the ballroom?” he wondered, in the general direction of an aide. She shrugged. (They do.) Pritzker and I were tucked away in a hybrid conference/break room that was definitely not a ballroom. My opening question felt timely, given that Pritzker’s main political nemesis of late has embarked on building a ballroom at his own official residence, a process that began with the shocking demolition of the White House’s East Wing. In the scheme of things, this landmark leveling was a small, if highly symbolic, step on the path of havoc that Trump has blazed across much of the federal government and blue America. Chicago and Pritzker have figured prominently as targets. Last month, ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers surged into the greater metropolitan area, engaging in conspicuous raids and stopping people “because of their brown skin,” in the governor’s words. The agents were acting at the behest of Trump, who is also trying to send National Guard troops into what he has called the “most dangerous city in the world.” A judge has blocked the deployment until the legality of Trump’s order is settled in court. [Read: Democrats bet on a billionaire in Illinois] Pritzker is currently a focal-point Democratic leader against the activist aggressions of the White House. One could make a case that a state-versus-federal discord of this magnitude has not existed since the civil-rights movement, or even the Civil War era. Throughout our conversation, the governor seemed to project disbelief, bewilderment, a sense of Are you kidding me? over what have now become commonplace parts of his job—asking citizens to film federal officers acting improperly, volleying daily insults with the president, even suggesting that the nation’s commander in chief is “suffering dementia.” While the Guardsmen’s status remains in limbo, Pritzker has remained in constant action, and in constant demand. Events have been whipping fast around the chief executive, who has been popping up everywhere—in person and on TV screens, often in the midst of chaotic police or press scrums. Corralling the governor for an interview took me three weeks. He granted me 27 minutes of his time. When we spoke, Pritzker had just finished a ceremony to mark the reopening of the Kennedy Expressway, which connects downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport, following the completion of a three-year, $169 million rehabilitation project. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon in the windy “war zone” (Trump’s words), with sun sparkling off of the skyscrapers and Lake Michigan packed with sailboats. The only real hazard I encountered during my day in the city involved dodging bikes, scooters, and jogger-strollers on Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. I witnessed none of the “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” (the White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson’s words) that the president apparently believes to be the defining characteristics of America’s third-most-populous city. I suggested to Pritzker that these must be unprecedented times for him. He disputed this, and said that he has become well accustomed to unprecedented times. In fact, he maintained that since he was elected governor, he has enjoyed only about eight months of “precedented times”—a stretch in 2019 and early 2020, before COVID. “Then, the migrant crisis, which was started right, basically, as COVID was waning,” Pritzker told me. “And then now we get the Trump crisis.” This “Trump crisis,” I suggested, has ensured that Pritzker receives an overwhelming amount of national attention, perhaps more than he ever has. Winding up in a Chicago beef with Donald Trump might be welcome, of course, for a Democrat with possible presidential plans. Pritzker disputed this, too, or at least smirked at the idea that the intense spotlight is a big deal to him. “I think Gavin Newsom gets way more attention than I do,” he told me, referring to his counterpart in California, who has also been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2028—and who, like Pritzker, Trump has said should be arrested. [Read: The week that changed everything for Gavin Newsom] At the Kennedy Expressway event, I watched Pritzker standing behind a podium, surrounded by a cluster of state and local politicians, members of his administration, business and labor leaders, and a few dozen people in hard hats and vests. The governor has a thick helmet of brown hair; a large, round, sculpted-looking face; and an overall bowling-ball bearing—something between Babe Ruth and Ralph Kramden. When it was Pritzker’s turn to speak at the ceremony, he seemed to relish the highway reopening as a tactile triumph, something that felt blissfully like normal governor’s stuff. “It isn’t the flashiest project,” he said, after mentioning the 16 new overhead signs and 1,200 new LED fixtures that now adorn the revamped road, which carries 275,000 vehicles a day. He described the project as “gritty, foundational, and absolutely essential work.” “At a time of historic division in our politics, there is one idea that we can all rally around,” Pritzker said. “And that’s ‘Traffic sucks.’” This reprieve from the “Trump crisis” ended for Pritzker as soon as he commenced with questions from the press, about half of which involved ICE, CBP, or the president. The governor talked about a new “accountability commission” that he had introduced the day before, composed of a variety of community leaders. The commission’s charge will be to document any potentially illegal behavior that federal authorities engage in while they are in

Erik Loomis What drives Trump’s politics is nostalgia for the age of coal, when dirty fuel and no environmental regulations created his version of a great America. The post The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal appeared first on The Nation.

Sanae Takaichi is officially Japan’s first female prime minister. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was elected to the post on Tuesday after winning four more votes than the required majority. Takaichi’s career in politics spans across a handful of ministerial posts and a decade in Japan’s congress. Japan’s new leader is a…

Laura Ingraham is the latest Fox News personality to team up with the Trump family, this time joining Donald Trump Jr. to head the billionaire-backed Colombier Acquisition Corp III.  The new special-purpose acquisition company essentially serves as a “blank check” to help fund privately listed companies. In this case, the group—in an ominous statement on its filing—plans to “fund the next chapter of American Exceptionalism and help Make America Grow Again.”  But Ingraham’s new relationship with Trump Jr. comes at a time when Fox News has been at odds with the Trump family. Donald Trump Jr. “They allow [Democrats] to spew their narrative,” Trump Jr. said earlier this month, accusing the network of chasing “clickbait” instead of promoting the conservative message. “I don’t watch it anymore because it is so ridiculous. They try so hard to be unbiased that they’re actually biased towards conservatives at this point.” But, of course, Trump Jr. might just be parroting his father’s talking points.  President Donald Trump has been complaining about the network for quite some time, complaining on Truth Social in 2024 that Fox News has “lost its way” and was too soft on Democrats.  More recently, Trump sued Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch after his other outlet, the Wall Street Journal, published his alleged birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.  Still, Trump’s own administration is stacked with former Fox News personalities, so maybe all of this public trash-talking and legal drama is for show.  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy are among those who made the small jump from Fox News to Trump’s team. And for those who didn’t get a spot in the Trump administration, they still remain close enough to the president to publicly do his bidding—like Sean Hannity. Perhaps Ingraham’s new business venture with Trump Jr. is a sign that the president and his propaganda machine have finally kissed and made up.