Politics

A federal judge in Kentucky broke with the Trump administration on Monday, sentencing former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison to almost three years in prison for his role in a home raid that killed Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker. The Justice Department had recommended that Hankison serve just one day in jail.  Hankison, who fired 10 blind shots during the botched raid on her apartment in March 2020, was the only officer at the scene to face charges tied to Taylor’s death. He is the first person sentenced to prison in a case that rocked Louisville and helped fuel a national uprising over racial injustice and police brutality. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, who was appointed by Donald Trump during his first presidency, said the Justice Department’s request for a one-day sentence “is not appropriate” and would have minimized the jury’s decision to convict Hankison last fall.  Breonna Taylor, shown in an undated photo. In November, jurors found Hankison guilty of violating Taylor’s civil rights by using excessive force when he fired several rounds through her covered window. The shots didn’t hit Taylor, but his bullets tore through the walls and entered a neighboring apartment, where a couple and a five-year-old child lived. Taylor was killed by another officer’s gunfire after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a single warning shot, thinking the officers were intruders. Jennings, who presided over two of Hankison’s trials, said she was “startled” that more people weren’t injured during the raid, and she criticized the Justice Department’s request to downplay the seriousness of the crime. Some of its arguments, she said from the bench, were “incongruous and inappropriate.” Hankison was sentenced to 33 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. While Jennings imposed a sentence far shorter than the life term technically available under federal law, she made clear that the Justice Department’s sentencing memo troubled her. Submitted by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump appointee who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the memo argued Hankison should receive a one-day sentence (time served) and suggested he never should have faced civil rights charges at all. The filing marked a sharp break from the department’s previous approach. Under prior leadership, the Justice Department had aggressively pursued charges against Hankison and other officers involved in the fatal raid. But since Trump returned to the White House, federal prosecutors have weakened their stance.  In court, lead federal prosecutor Rob Keenan repeatedly sided with Hankison’s defense on points that would lower the sentence. Prosecutors even argued that Hankison was particularly vulnerable to abuse in prison and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, expressed frustration that the new team of federal prosecutors hadn’t fought for a harsher sentence. Attorney Ben Crump, left, stands beside Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor, center; and Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, center right, outside the federal courthouse in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 21. “There was no prosecution in there for us,” Palmer said after the verdict. “Brett had his own defense team, and I didn’t know he got a second one.” The Justice Department’s lax recommendation was also slammed by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who helped Taylor’s family win a $12 million settlement from the city of Louisville. In a post on Facebook, he called it “an insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and a blatant betrayal of the jury’s decision.”  After the hearing, he told The Associated Press that while he had hoped for a longer sentence, he was “grateful” that Hankison is “at least going to prison and has to think for those 3 years about Breonna Taylor and that her life mattered.” Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was killed during a police raid conducted under a warrant based on flimsy and misleading evidence linking her to an ex-boyfriend suspected of drug trafficking. In 2022, three other former and current officers were charged with their roles in allegedly falsifying the warrant that led to the deadly raid. One has pleaded guilty, and trials are pending for the other two.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency chief in charge of Urban Search and Rescue has quit the agency following a lackluster response to the recent flooding in Texas that killed more than 100 people. Ken Pagurek resigned on Monday, reportedly in response to efforts by the Trump administration to hobble the agency, part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing policies against funding and properly staffing branches of the federal government. Previously, Pagurek worked for more than a decade at FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch and led multiple teams responding to natural disasters. CNN reported that “Pagurek told colleagues at FEMA that the delay was the tipping point that led to his voluntary departure after months of frustration with the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency, according to two sources familiar with his thinking.” First responders search along the banks of the Guadalupe River, as rescue efforts continue after extreme flooding in Ingram, Texas. At least 135 people died in the Texas floods on July 4. Among the most tragic cases was the flooding at Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors were killed. Included in the deaths were several children as young as 8 years old. Families in the region affected by the flooding have said they did not receive warnings and alerts ahead of the flood giving them enough time to prepare and have attributed deaths to those delays. In some instances, there was a 90-minute delay before an alert was sent out and some residents said they didn’t get an alert until six hours later. Asked about the problems on July 11, Trump lashed out at reporters for questioning his team’s actions. “Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you,” Trump told the press. “I don’t know who you are but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.” FEMA was a prime target for the cuts to government funding led by the Department of Government Efficiency, the team set up by Trump at the beginning of his term and led by donor and billionaire Elon Musk. DOGE actions authorized by Trump disrupted FEMA payments to states, local governments, and nonprofit groups. Related | Elon Musk’s mayhem is still being felt across the government Musk and DOGE similarly targeted a swath of agencies, undermining basic operations that have been in place for decades—across both parties. DOGE teams staffed with loyalists to Trump and Musk infiltrated government systems, while courts repeatedly ruled that their actions had broken the law. Additionally, Trump installed loyalist Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security with aid from Senate Republicans who confirmed her. The department is the parent agency for FEMA. Noem has presided over layoffs and disruptions at FEMA as part of Trump’s actions to defund federal response programs. And in June, acting FEMA head David Richardson reportedly told staffers he wasn’t even aware that the U.S. had a hurricane season. Trump has sought to uproot FEMA’s abilities and now his plan is in place—the result is unqualified leadership, sluggish responses to disaster, and a rising death toll. 

While speaking with reporters Tuesday, President Donald Trump was asked if he thought anyone should be criminally investigated by the Department of Justice for the “treasonous conspiracy” that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard recently claimed that President Barack Obama orchestrated a massive conspiracy during the 2016 election cycle to ruin Trump. “The leader of the gang was President Obama—Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?” Trump said, naming President Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey as co-conspirators.  He went on to say, “He’s guilty. It’s not a question. You know, I like to say, let’s give it time. It’s there. He’s guilty. This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever even imagined, even in other countries.” YouTube Video Trump’s latest rant seems to be another desperate attempt to distract from his ongoing and increasingly disturbing failure to release the long-promised “Epstein files.”  On Monday, in a similar bid to pander to the MAGA base, Attorney General Pam Bondi released unrelated documents tied to the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr., and, yes, once more, Hillary Clinton’s emails. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to Trump’s efforts during a press conference on Monday, saying that he and the GOP are “running scared.” He reminded the public that invoking the names of Obama and Biden is merely a smokescreen.  The real issue remains: Trump’s broken promise to release the details about alleged sex trafficker and his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein. 

Another day, another breathless statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio about how he’s keeping us safe by forcibly deporting our friends and neighbors on the flimsiest of pretexts.  On Monday, the Trump administration moved to strip permanent lawful status from Haitians it alleges are collaborating with Viv Ansanm, the gang controlling most of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. If this sounds like a repeat of the administration’s antics with MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, that’s because it is. We just haven’t reached the “deporting people based on their tattoos” or the “Donald Trump believing photoshopped tattoos are real” stages of attacks on Haitians yet—but give the administration time.  Rubio’s announcement was likely inevitable after the administration designated Viv Ansanm and another Haitian gang, Gran Grif, as foreign terrorist groups in May. Once the administration issued that designation, it was free to start deporting lawful permanent residents—also known as green card holders—whom it alleges support Viv Ansanm.  Would you like to know how the administration plans to identify these individuals, or what exactly would constitute a deportable offense? Well, you can’t. While Rubio is big on bellicosity, he’s light on details so far.  Protesters shout slogans during a pro-migrant rally, demanding an end to deportations in New York, on Feb. 9. This is all part of a larger deportation push against lawful immigrants. Not only is the administration carrying out a massive, mistake-ridden deportation campaign against supposed gang members, it’s also mid-trial over its attacks on pro-Palestinian students. In that push, the administration has frequently detained people for such nefarious crimes as writing op-eds critical of Israel, with Trump’s team claiming that counts as some sort of material support for Hamas.  Unfortunately, it was inevitable that the deportation fervor would come for Haitians. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance spent the 2024 presidential campaign spewing horrifically racist lies about Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, leading to dozens of bomb threats by Trump supporters. Vance even declared that Haitians with Temporary Protected Status, which gives legal status to immigrants from designated countries considered too dangerous to return to, were still not here legally. “If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said in North Carolina last September, despite that vice presidents are not responsible for TPS designations. But facts would ruin his flow.  Earlier this year, Trump revoked a different program that granted temporary legal status, known as humanitarian parole, for Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. A lower court blocked the order, but no worries—the Supreme Court made sure to let Trump go ahead.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gather for a briefing before an enforcement operation on Jan. 27 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Rubio won’t say how many people the administration is planning on deporting under the rubric of this new gang panic. That lack of detail is no doubt deliberate since it gives the administration the flexibility to say that anyone it wants to deport are gang members, based on whatever things the administration declares signify gang membership. So expect some more photoshopped tattoos or something equally nonsensical.  The Trump administration’s decision to remove protections from Haitians is racist—and very dangerous for Haitians. Sending people back to Haiti poses a great risk, per Rubio’s own State Department, which advises Americans not to travel to Haiti because of the risks of kidnapping, terrorist activity, and civil unrest.  Given the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, the United Nations has even been begging the U.S. to stop deporting people to the nation. And speaking of the U.N., the U.S. in February also froze funding to the international security force combating armed gangs in Haiti, so it doesn’t seem like we care much about those gangs—save using them as a way to justify deportations.  Expect the administration to do exactly what we’ve seen with allegations of support for Hamas or MS-13 or Tren de Aragua—an ever-expanding rationale that not just allows swift deportation action but also requires it. The administration is telling us this will keep us safe, but it’s actually what is putting us all in peril.

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Treasury secretary has some bonkers thoughts on Trump and Obama

PoliticusUSA is independent news that doesn’t sanewash or bend a knee, but we need your help. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Donald Trump can’t escape Jeffrey Epstein. The president is also nearly 80 years old, and whatever talent he once had for creating distractions to avoid his own scandals has left him. What remains of Donald Trump is a man with limited abilities who returns to the same ground over and over again in the hope that he can conjure up one more distraction that will allow him to make his escape. At the White House on Tuesday, Trump’s strain to distract ran straight into his decline and produced a collapse. Video: Even by the lofty standard of Trump’s mental decline, what came out of his mouth at the White House really needs to be read to be understood comprehensively. Trump said: We’re going to add that to all the stuff that we found. It just confirms it. But what we found is even more so now we found absolute. This isn’t like evidence or this is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious, that Obama was trying to lead a coup. And it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people. But Obama headed it up. And, you know, I get a kick when I hear everyone talks about people I’ve never even heard of. It was this one. No, no, it was Obama. He headed it up and it says so right in the papers. Got everything, got everything. This is the biggest scandal in the history of our country. Read more

PoliticusUSA is 100% ad and corporate-free, so please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Jim Jordan Deposed in Federal Court about Ohio State University Cover-Up Republican lawmaker Jim Jordan sat for a depostion under oath on Friday, marking the first time he has been under oath about the Ohio State University sex scandal. Flying monkeys engaged in a widespread and ongoing cover-up in the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal, with an Associated Press investigation finding that almost 1,700 priests and clergy credibly accused of sex abuse are unsupervised now, some of them were found as of 2019 to be “teachers, coaches, counselors and also live near playgrounds.” We also saw this same protect-the-predator/s behavior in the Ohio State University wrestling coach sex abuse scandal. In 2019, an independent report found that the OSU team doctor had committed nearly 1,500 acts of sexual assault and nearly 50 instances of rape during his 20-year tenure. Former Ohio State University student-athletes filed civil litigation against the school, and now far-Right Republican lawmaker and *current* House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan was deposed in federal court on Friday about the cover-up: Jordan served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1995 — the same period Strauss was employed by the university. Several survivors have alleged that Jordan was aware of the abuse student-athletes experienced but took no action to report it. Jordan has repeatedly denied these claims. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A university investigation has previously concluded that Dr. Strauss abused at least 177 male students between 1979 and 1996, during his tenure as a physician for Ohio State’s Athletics Department and the campus Student Health Center. In a new HBO documentary, “Surviving Ohio State,” former Ohio State wrestlers say Ohio Republican Jim Jordan knew about the coach’s abuse. “To say that (Jordan) knew nothing, that nothing ever happened, it’s a flat out lie,” a former Ohio State Wrestler said in the documentary. Jordan has denied ignoring the abuse in his position as the wrestling coach. The film “indicts those who looked away,” Robin Abcarian wrote in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. Jordan was deposed on Friday after being accused of ignoring sexual abuse for years, while his Republican colleagues work to shut down knowledge about yet another sexual abuse scandal. Sexual abuse of children is a crime that often leaves a lifelong imprint on the victim and/or survivor. “Childhood sexual trauma is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicide, alcohol problems, and eating disorders,” VAWnet reported. Perpetrators and enablers come from all political sides, but only one party elevates their known rapist to the head of their party and to be president of the United States of America. That party is currently engaged in trying to hide information about powerful people named in the Epstein files, as Democrats work to make the names public. While he was forced to testify about the sex abuse scandal that happened while he was at Ohio State, Jim Jordan was also working with his fellow House Republican leaders to block any efforts to release the Epstein files. Justice has been denied to the Ohio State victims for too long, but through this civil suit, they finally got Jim Jordan under oath, and perhaps accountability could be coming. What do you think about Jordan having to testify? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is the Energizer Bunny of investigating former President Joe Biden. His newest plan of attack is to examine Biden’s judicial appointments, pardons, and executive orders and, if any were signed with an autopen, they are “in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law.”  While Comer has enough juice to go forever, his tireless nature doesn’t make up for the fact that his ideas wouldn’t survive the scrutiny of a 10th-grade civics class. Comer can examine everything Biden ever wrote or signed or didn’t sign, and none of those things would mean that Biden’s judicial appointments could be undone. The only method to remove judicial appointees is the same as to remove Donald Trump: impeachment.  During a softball appearance on Fox News, Comer was asked if he was looking into Biden’s judicial appointments and said he was investigating “everything that was signed with the autopen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency.” While Comer was not explicitly asked about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, his whole “null and void” comment came right after a segment focusing on her.  A cartoon by Tim Campbell. It’s sheer buffoonery on Comer’s part to call Biden’s use of an autopen “the biggest scandal in the history of American politics.” Since Comer also thought that Trump’s insurrection was no big deal and Democrats had an “obsession with partisanship” in impeaching him, he has a peculiar idea of what constitutes a scandal. Equally buffoonish is Comer’s attempt to explain when it’s totally cool to use autopens or digital signatures and when it is the greatest threat to the Republic imaginable. But Comer had to give it a try, given that NBC News found he used a digital signature on letters and subpoena notices related to the Biden probe—a signature inserted by someone other than Comer.  But that’s fine because Comer always signs “legally binding subpoenas” with a wet signature, and how dare you compare that to the “unauthorized use of an autopen” in the Biden White House. Unauthorized by who, James? Comer is also stuck with the fact that the Department of Justice approved the use of autopens in 2005, and Trump has admitted to using them as well. Nonetheless, Comer is soldiering on, insisting that if Biden didn’t have knowledge of executive orders signed with his name, it raises an issue of whether those orders are legal. Comer has floated this idea for a while now, telling Fox News last month that if Biden didn’t know about the orders, “then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to execute his agenda a whole lot easier.” Comer: “If we can find information that would lead us to believe that Joe Biden had no knowledge of those executive orders being signed in his name, then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to executive his agenda a whole lot easier.” — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-06-01T15:05:17.476Z Quick, someone tell Comer how a president can undo an executive order issued by a former president. There’s literally nothing easier, as all it requires is the president to issue an order saying the previous executive order is now revoked. Whatever Comer perceives is preventing Trump’s success, it isn’t Biden’s executive orders.  Were Comer to do some digging, he might find a president who didn’t know what he was signing. Unfortunately for Comer, that president is Trump.  Trump openly admitted he either doesn’t know what he’s signing or is letting someone sign things in his name. Trump signed the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove Venezuelan migrants in secret, but when asked by reporters about Judge James Boasberg’s criticism of that, Trump said, “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” and that “other people handled it.”  It’s not entirely clear if that was meant to be an admission or just a self-inflicted wound incurred when Trump threw Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the bus: “Marco Rubio’s done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that.” Comer’s well-worn path is also being trod by Ed Martin. Martin was once Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., until it became clear that Martin was too unhinged even for Senate Republicans. Martin is now the pardons attorney at the Department of Justice.  Right after getting his new gig, Martin said his top priority was to review Biden’s pardons. Unlike Comer, Martin doesn’t think Biden’s use of an autopen is the issue, but nonetheless told ABC News, “the Biden pardons need some scrutiny. I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did and if they’re, I don’t know, null and void, I’m not sure how that operates.” One doesn’t need to be a failed U.S. attorney appointee to know that, as with judicial appointments, there is no mechanism to reverse a pardon. Martin knows this, and Comer does too. But pretending they don’t is red meat for the Trump base, and that’s what they really care about. 

A cartoon by Jack Ohman. Related | DOJ’s latest firing ensures Epstein scandal won’t go away

President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday to defend the use of masks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as they terrorize communities across the country. “The masks, I think, are important. How do we get rid of the mask? Stop the hateful rhetoric,” he whined.  Related | Trump goons take another step toward creating a secret police force Widely considered the “father” of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy—which tore thousands of families apart during his first term—Homan blamed the “out of control people” on the left for why ICE agents feel the need to disguise their identities. “I specifically mean members of Congress. If members in Congress can compare ICE to the Nazis, that gives some of those people on the far left—you know, the out of control people—and emboldens them to take action. I’m just asking, let’s stop the hateful rhetoric,” he said. YouTube Video Homan’s gestapo-like enforcers have been terrorizing law-abiding immigrants on worksites, schools, and in their neighborhoods. And as people protest the Trump administration’s unlawful actions, Trump has responded with a deranged willingness to use military force. Homan has previously profited from the same private detention centers that are now being filled by ICE agents, many of whom are detaining people with no criminal records. One example is 82-year-old Pennsylvania resident Luis Leon, who was taken by ICE agents while trying to get a replacement for his green card last month.   The blossoming outrage over ICE isn’t the “hateful rhetoric” that Homan tries to paint it as. It’s a direct response to the Trump administration’s openly illegal, authoritarian, and inhumane approach to immigration enforcement.