update - USSC strikes down CO's conversion therapy ban 8 - 1

Trump allies hid collusion to inflate grocery costs: report


On Friday, a nonprofit forced the Trump administration to unseal a damning complaint lodged by the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission against Pepsi for colluding with Walmart to raise food prices across the nation. New un-redacted information claims FTC Chair Ferguson and his colleague Mark Meador (both Trump appointees) were hiding the mechanics of Pepsi’s and Wal-Mart’s price fixing.


Pepsi is a “must-have” product for grocery stores, and Walmart is also massively powerful,” reports BIG Newsletter writer Matt Stoller. Critics say Pepsi allegedly engages in price discrimination to maintain the approval of Walmart, its biggest buyer — even going so far as to police prices at smaller rival stores. And it prepares reports for Walmart showing them their pricing advantages on Pepsi products.

When the “price gap” between Wal-Mart and its tiny rivals narrow too much, Pepsi tracks where consumers were buying Pepsi products outside of Walmart. It keeps logs on stores who would “self-fund” Pepsi product discounts, nicknaming them “offenders” and then raise their stock price, forcing them to carry those costs down to their customers.

“This dynamic is why independent grocery stores are dying,” said Stoller. “… It’s led to less competition, fewer local grocery stores, and higher prices. … To the end consumer, it creates an optimal illusion. Walmart appears to be a low-cost retailer, but that’s because it induces its suppliers to push prices up at rivals.”

Much of this information was redacted by Trump officials, however, including Ferguson and Meador. Normally, when the government files an antitrust case, the complaint gets redacted to protect confidential business information. Then the corporate defendant and the government haggle over what is genuinely confidential business information and complaints are eventually unsealed with some minor blacked out phrases, and the case goes on.

“In this case, however, … Ferguson abruptly dropped the case in February after Pepsi hired well-connected lobbyists,” said Stoller. “… Ferguson ended it the day before the government was supposed to go before the judge to manage the unsealing process. And that kept the complaint redacted. With the complaint kept secret, Ferguson, and … Meador, then publicly went on the attack.”

Ferguson released a “bitter and personal” statement against Biden-era FTC Chair Lina Khan — who had brought the complaint against Pepsi — implying that she was lawless and partisan, that there was “no evidence” to support key contentions, and that Ferguson had to “clean up the Biden-Harris FTC’s mess.” Fellow commissioner Mark Meador later echoed his comments on on X.

“And that was where it was supposed to stay, secret, with mean-spirited name-calling and invective camouflaging the real secret Ferguson was trying to conceal,” said Stoller. “That secret is something we all know, but this complaint helped prove that the center of the affordability crisis in food is market power. If that got out, then Ferguson would have to litigate this case or risk deep embarrassment. So, the strategy was to handwave about that mean Lina Khan to lobbyists, while keeping the evidence secret.”

But anti-monopoly group The Institute for Local Self-Reliance filed to make the full complaint public, and Judge Jesse Matthew Furman agreed to hear ILSR’s case, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Pepsi bitterly opposed.

“Last week, Furman directed the FTC unseal the complaint. So we finally got to see what Ferguson and Meador were trying to hide,” Stoller said.


Read the full BIG report at this link

Trump keeps bringing attention to his rapid decline | Opinion


Donald Trump went out to give a rally for the first time in months, speaking this week in a swing district in Pennsylvania. The White House hyped it to be a speech on affordability, but he instead attacked “affordability” as a “hoax” and veered into his usual viciously racist attacks.


Democrats couldn’t wish for a better scenario.

Trump is reminding everyone, every day, that his presidency is a disaster. And Tuesday after Tuesday, in elections all across the country, people have been responding by voting against him and the GOP. This past Tuesday Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to win the Miami’ mayor’s race in 28 years.

She won by 19 points, while Kamala Harris won Miami only by a point in 2024, as Trump made inroad with Latinos, who make up a majority of registered voters in Miami. The Republican on the ticket is Latino himself, former city manager Emilio González, and was endorsed by Trump. But Trump’s support has crashed in the Latino community, driven by his economic chaos and his mass deportations.

Trump, who said in the Pennsylvania speech that “tariff” is his favorite word, just keeps giving people reasons to vote against him even if they previously supported him.

And as he stumbles, he’s bringing more attention to his mental decline and his physical health. The media haven’t nearly covered Trump’s health in the way they covered President Biden’s mental and physical competency.

But not to worry, Trump will remind you of it himself. He’s the one who blurted out on Air Force One that he’d had an MRI in his second physical in the summer, claiming it all was great. But that just raised a thousand questions, as no one gets an MRI as a routine screening. The speculation hasn’t died down, even as the White House has put out further very vague information. And it raises more questions about his swollen angles and bruised hands, which are there for all to see.

When The New York Times finally did a story on how Trump has slowed down, not doing rallies on the road and not having many events inside the White House—and raised his health—Trump went ballistic. He could have just let it be, but no, he had to write a massive Truth Social post that accused the paper of being “seditious” and “treasonous” because no one should be question Dear Leader.

Those are his favorite lines of attack, which only once again highlight his aspirations to be a dictator or a king. It’s outrageous and dangerous, but it also is yet another example of Trump bringing attention to the very thing he doesn’t want anyone paying attention to. We always hear about Trump trying to distract—and that’s true—but he also has a habit of making sure everyone’s laser-focused the thing he’s most afraid of. The rest of the media covered it for the next day, and the Times responded, getting more attention to the issue.

Trump couldn’t resist though because being seen as frail and weak is horrifying to him—and that’s because it’s true. For all the reasons I’ve written here about in recent weeks, Republicans are pushing back on him as MAGA is cracking up. So he can’t help but go on the attack, but then only brings more attention to the story rather than distracting from it.


And that’s what happened with his “affordability” speech, as he only underscored that he doesn’t understand the issue, couldn’t care less about people’s pain and has actually caused that pain with his tariffs.

Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in an interview a few days ago that they’d be putting Trump on the road in mega-rallies next year—though Trump, who seems exhausted, hasn’t been told yet.

“I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” Wiles told The Mom VIEW, a MAGA show produced by the group Moms for America.

Then she literally said they’re going to “put him on the ballot” in the midterm elections for Congress all across the country:

Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House; you localize the election. And you keep the federal officials out of it. We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot.

Click to expand...

Bring it on! Again, Democrats could not ask for more.

Court rejects Trump bid against Clinton and upholds $1M penalty

His RICO case

A federal appeals court has refused Donald Trump’s attempt to restore his RICO case against Hillary Clinton and has upheld a penalty of nearly $1 million against President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, finding that they engaged in «sanctionable conduct» by filing a frivolous lawsuit targeting Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.

Frivolous

In its opinion, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge William Pryor Jr. added that Trump and Habba’s accusations «were indeed frivolous», echoing the assessment of the previous judge who handled the case.

2016 presidential campaign

2016 presidential campaign© Getty Images
Trump’s bid sought to reinstate the 2022 lawsuit targeting Clinton, Comey and others over allegations about ties between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. For years, Trump has claimed that Clinton orchestrated a broad conspiracy to fabricate false accusations against his 2016 campaign and to trigger investigations such as special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, but he failed to convince the court with the lawsuit he filed in 2022.

A pattern of misusing the courts

But the three-judge appeals panel composed of Chief Judge William Pryor Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, Trump appointee Andrew Brasher and Biden appointee Embry Kidd concluded unanimously that the district court judge who originally ruled against Trump had properly taken into account his «pattern of misusing the courts» when deciding to sanction him. The panel also found that the same standard justified sanctions against his attorney, Alina Habba and leaving in place a penalty of nearly $1 million against them.

His reputation

In 2022, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming that Hillary Rodham Clinton, James Comey and others conspired to invent allegations of collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, which he argued damaged his reputation and business interests. In 2023, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee, dismissed the case, describing the 193-page complaint as a «shotgun pleading» that was confusing and poorly structured.

Reasonable lawyer

Middlebrooks found that the lawsuit failed to identify any coordinated enterprise, did not allege valid criminal acts, did not show concrete financial damages and was filed outside the statute of limitations, concluding that it served a political rather than a legal purpose and writing: «This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it».

The Supreme Court

Donald Trump can still seek a rehearing by the full appeals court or ask the Supreme Court to take up the case, and he or the White House could yet comment publicly on the appeals panel’s decision.

Border Patrol to move away from sweeping immigration raids: report


The U.S. Border Patrol is reportedly shifting away from sweeping immigration raids, such as those at Home Depot and other locations, to make operations more tailored to specific individuals, according to a report.

Under senior Border Patrol officer Gregory Bovino, teams will begin focusing their attention on specific targets, including undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes, Homeland Security sources told NewsNation.


Since enforcement operations began, the administration claims it is targeting “the worst of the worst,” but government data indicate less than 30 percent of those detained or deported had a criminal conviction.

Instead, the administration has been conducting raids at locations where larger populations of undocumented immigrants live or work. Among those rounded up and deported have been veterans of the U.S. military, the parents of U.S. citizen children, students on visas, and hundreds of thousands of others.

As a result, President Donald Trump’s approval rating on immigration has sunk from 49 percent in April to 38 percent in December, according to an AP-NORC poll.

Seemingly, to improve public approval of immigration raids, Border Patrol is changing up its tactics.

However, in a statement to The Independent, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security appeared to contradict NewsNation’s report, saying, “We have always been going after the worst of the worst first. There are no operational changes to announce.”

Ongoing sweeping operations, such as “Catahoula Crunch” in New Orleans, are expected to continue, NewsNation reported.

Those sweeping operations, which have been conducted in Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Washington, D.C., Portland and other cities, have received widespread negative attention for the aggressive tactics Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other departments have used.

Members of the communities have pushed back on law enforcement, leading to clashes between protesters and immigration enforcement throughout the country.

Border Patrol enforcement officers have clashed with protesters while conducting immigration operations throughout the country (AFP via Getty Images)
A signature pillar of Trump’s agenda is mass deportation. On the campaign trail, he promised to deport undocumented immigrants whom he falsely characterized as “criminals.” In the administration, officials such as Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of Trump’s immigration deportations, have pressured officials to increase deportation numbers.

It’s under that pressure that enforcement officials have conducted the sweeping operations.

Valcazar said:

Is there any real reason to believe this?



Oh good, the reporters aren't being wilfully gullible.

They are probably just announcing this for PR and are going to crack down on people filming them on raids.

Click to expand...

We'll see, I guess.

My own theory is that Trump only does anything for public approval. OTOH, this crap is likely put together by Miller and the other WH assholes.

Trump sues Minneapolis public schools for alleged 'racist' policy

Donald Trump's Department of Justice sued the Minneapolis public school district for what it claims is a 'bastion of DEI' by giving priority to black teachers for both getting jobs and avoiding layoffs. The move continues the administration's recent focus on the city, as they put pressure on the state over allegations of Minnesota's Somali-American fraudsters plundering their state's generous welfare system. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that the city's teachers' union prefers 'underrepresented population' members for 'certain employment benefits, terms and conditions.'

'Discrimination is unacceptable in all forms, especially when it comes to hiring decisions. Our public education system in Minnesota and across the country must be a bastion of merit and equal opportunity - not DEI,' Bondi said. The lawsuit claimed that the public school system is hoping to increase minority staffing hires to around 40 percent by 2026 and making all new hires as such at least 54.3 percent. The DOJ alleges that the district and teachers' collective bargaining agreement classifies teachers by race when determining layoffs, reinstatements and transfers.

MPS is also accused of giving an outside group called 'Black Men Teach Fellows' similar employment benefits. 'Employers may not provide more favorable terms and conditions of employment based on an employee's race,' said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. 'The Department of Justice will vigorously pursue employers who deny their employees equal opportunities and benefits by classifying and limiting them based on their race, color, national origin.' Pictured: Minneapolis Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams. The DOJ is seeking a permanent injunction against the district from allowing such action to be put in the CBA.

When reached by The Daily Mail, a spokesperson for Minneapolis Public Schools declined to comment on pending litigation. We also reached out to the city's teachers' union. Its the latest action taken by the administration against liberal-leaning Minnesota after Republican officials argued that the state's Somali-American fraudsters not only plundered their state's generous welfare system but also fed money into one of the world's most feared Islamist insurgencies. The eye-watering scale is staggering. Some $300million was stolen from a single federal meals program. Prosecutors believe the real total across multiple schemes could top $1billion. More than 50 fraudsters have already been convicted, with dozens more cases in the pipeline. Court filings show that chunks of the stolen cash were sent back to Somalia or used to buy properties across East Africa.

It is a scandal that has put Minnesota and its Scandinavian-style welfare system on the map for all the wrong reasons. And it's put the spotlight on the state's large Somali diaspora community, as well as Democratic Governor Tim Walz and others accused of ignoring warnings while public money vanished into thin air. Research by the conservative City Journal found that 'untold millions' of public money was funneled through hawala networks to Somalia and that 'largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.' After that bombshell, the US Treasury Department on December 1 announced it had opened an investigation into whether US taxpayer dollars ended up in the hands of terrorists.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he wanted to know whether Minnesotans' money had been diverted to al-Shabaab 'under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz.' The following day, Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against Somali immigrants, calling them 'garbage' who had 'ripped off' the state. 'When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but [expletive], we don't want them in our country,' Trump fumed. 'Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.' His remarks drew instant fire. Representative Ilhan Omar –⁠ the Somali-born Democratic congresswoman who represents Minneapolis –⁠ slammed Trump for his xenophobia and insisted her community was being smeared.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law involved in Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery


A few hours after Paramount unveiled its hostile bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery — itself coming just days after Netflix’s surprise announcement that it intended to buy Warner Bros. and HBO — a new twist emerged: Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, is involved in Paramount’s effort to seize control of Warner Bros., HBO and also CNN, a network frequently criticized by Trump. According to the New York Times, Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is among the investors supporting Paramount’s offer, adding an unexpected political dimension to an already high-stakes corporate battle.


Paramount returned to the table with its hostile bid only after its first offer for Warner Bros. Discovery had been rejected as too low, and it was able to raise its price thanks to a wave of external financing. In regulatory filings, the company said that Larry Ellison, the father of chief executive David Ellison, together with the private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, had committed to backstop the 40 billion dollars in cash needed for the new offer. Paramount also lined up a group of additional investors to offload part of that commitment, including Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners, as well as sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, whose money would help fund the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and its crown jewels, from HBO to CNN.


On 5 December, Netflix announced a 72 billion dollar deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studios and its HBO Max streaming service, a takeover that would fold some of Hollywood’s most valuable assets into the Netflix empire. Trump quickly cast doubt on the transaction, warning that the merger «could be a problem» because of Netflix’s market share, saying he would be «involved» in the review and signalling that his administration viewed the deal with «heavy skepticism» on antitrust grounds. A few days later, Paramount escalated the fight: after an initial bid of around 60 billion dollars, at just under 24 dollars per share, had been rejected by Warner Bros. Discovery as too low, the company returned with a hostile all-cash offer worth 108.4 billion dollars, or 30 dollars per share, for the entire group, including CNN and the traditional TV networks. That new proposal is roughly 48.4 billion dollars higher than Paramount’s first approach and about 36.4 billion more than Netflix’s 72 billion dollar bid.

Conservative-leaning moguls
People close to Trump are now circling not just legacy TV brands but also the biggest social platform of the moment. With Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners helping to finance Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a Trump family vehicle could end up with a stake in Warner Bros., HBO and CNN, a network the president routinely attacks. At the same time, Trump has said he is lining up a «very wealthy» group of buyers to take over TikTok’s US operations, and has publicly name-checked conservative-leaning moguls such as Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison among the potential investors. Taken together, these moves mean that some of the most coveted news and entertainment assets in the country — from cable channels to a dominant short-video app — are being targeted by financiers and tech billionaires who are either directly tied to the Trump family or closely aligned with the president politically.

Hassett says Federal Reserve can reject Trump's views if he is chair


WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading candidate to be President Donald Trump's choice for Federal Reserve chair said that he would present the president's views to Fed officials for their consideration but they could reject them if they chose when making decisions on interest rates.

Kevin Hassett, in an interview Sunday on CBS News' “Face the Nation,” said he would continue to speak with Trump if he becomes the Fed chair. But when asked if Trump's opinions on interest rates would have “equal weighting” with members of the Fed's interest-rate setting committee, Hassett replied, “No, he would have no weight.”


“His opinion matters if it’s good, if it’s based on data,” Hassett continued. “And then if you go to the committee and you say, well, the president made this argument and that’s a really sound argument, I think, what do you think? If they reject it, then they’ll vote in a different way.”

Hassett’s comments come as Trump is reportedly in final interviews with potential replacements for the Fed’s current chair, Jerome Powell. Trump has emphasized that he expects whomever he nominates to lead the Fed will sharply lower the central bank’s key rate, which currently stands at about 3.6%. Trump has said it should be cut to 1% or lower, a view almost no economist shares. Trump's outspokenness has raised concerns about the Fed's independence from day-to-day politics under any chair he appoints.

Until Trump's first election in 2016, presidents of both parties for several decades had avoided commenting publicly on Fed decisions, and usually refrained from doing so privately as well. Economists generally believe that a politically independent Fed is better at combating inflation, because it can take unpopular steps to keep prices down, such as raise interest rates.

On Friday, however, Trump said that he “certainly should have a role in talking to whoever the head of the Fed is” about rates.

“I’ve done great. I’ve made a lot of money, I’m very successful,” he said. “I think my voice should be heard.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Kevin Warsh, a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and former Fed governor, is Trump's current favorite to replace Powell, whose term ends next May. But Trump has previously hinted that he would pick Hassett.

“I think the two Kevins are great,” Trump told the Journal.

Hassett, for his part, on Sunday said that “in the end, the job of the Fed is to be independent.”

“In the end, it’s a committee that votes,” he said. “And I’d be happy to talk to the president every day until both of us are dead because it’s so much fun."

Christopher Rugaber, The Associated Press

Trump's 'Wall Street gold rush' now getting a dose of reality: report


During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump aggressively expanded his outreach — picking up more support from Latinos, Generation Z, independents, swing voters and tech bros than he had enjoyed in 2016 or 2020. Trump, now almost 11 months into his second presidency, still brags about his relationships with the tech industry. But according to CNN's Matt Egan, not everyone who works in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street is benefitting from Trump's economic policies.


"Donald Trump's return to the White House set off a gold rush on Wall Street and in the crypto world," Egan reports in an article published on December 15. "Companies and crypto projects linked to Trump and his family exploded in value as traders bet they would benefit from the president's return to power. The crash back to Earth for many of these assets reflects the fact that many of these bets were hard to make sense of in the first place."

Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, told CNN, "Sometimes, irrational exuberance meets the brick wall of logic."

Egan notes that President Trump's company, Trump Media & Technology Group, "plunged below $11 a share on Friday, (December 12), leaving it down roughly 80 percent from the pre-election peak and worth less than $3 billion." And according to the CNN reporter, the Donald Trump meme coin "spiked to as high as $45.57 on January 19" but is now "trading at around $5.60" and has "lost 88 percent of its value from the peak."

Similarly, Egan points out, the Melania Trump meme coin "peaked at $8.48 on January 19" but is now "worth just 11 cent."

"More recently," Egan reports, "American Bitcoin, a bitcoin miner backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, debuted on the Nasdaq in September after merging with Gryphon Digital Mining. American Bitcoin's share price initially popped, climbing to as high as $9.31 on September 9. But those gains have since vanished amid a broader crypto pullback, and American Bitcoin dropped below $2 last week."

Egan continues, "Likewise, World Liberty Financial, a firm Trump and Steve Witkoff co-founded last year along with their sons, started trading a new token in September. It rose to 25 cents in late September but has yet to take off and on Friday fell to 14 cents."

Read Matt Egan's full CNN article at this link.

Related Articles:

Why Trump’s revenge prosecutions keep hitting a brick wall


During his first presidency, Donald Trump bitterly clashed with some of his own appointees to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — including former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions. And ex-FBI Director Christopher Wray, another Trump appointee, resigned in late 2024 rather than waiting to be fired.

Trump, however, has made a point of only choosing MAGA loyalists for DOJ and FBI. Among them: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and federal prosecutors Jeanine Pirro and Lindsey Halligan.

But on Monday, December 8, Trump loyalist Alina Habba announced her retirement from DOJ's District of New Jersey. And Salon's Garrett Owen, in an article published on December 14, reports that Trump keeps stumbling in his efforts to use DOJ as a tool of revenge against his foes.

"Trump's interim U.S. attorneys are failing one by one," Owen explains. "Alina Habba, his embattled top attorney for New Jersey, resigned on Monday. A former lawyer for Trump, she was found to be illegally serving in her interim role after continuing past her 120-day mark…. Lindsey Halligan, the president's former personal lawyer, was explicitly picked to indict and prosecute two of Trump’s most high-profile enemies: former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James…. James was ready to face a new indictment surrounding alleged mortgage fraud. But on December 4, a grand jury declined to indict her."

Owen continues, "The Justice Department then attempted to indict her for a third time — and the second time in one week — but they failed again. When the department will follow up with Comey is unclear. For the moment, it is missing a lawfully serving U.S. attorney."

Owen notes that although longtime DOJ prosecutors "cautioned against charging Comey due to insufficient evidence," Halligan "did it anyway."

"The Justice Department has no clear prosecutor," Owen observes. "Instead, it has questionable cases, indictments made possible only by manipulation that have drawn the ire of federal judges and cast what Trump wanted to be a highly-publicized case of political revenge into a fly-by-night legal circus."

Garrett Owen's full article for Salon is available at this link.

Wisconsin judge postpones hearing for 1 of 3 former Trump aides


MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Monday postponed a preliminary hearing for one of three former aides to President Donald Trump facing felony forgery charges related to the 2020 election amid questions about what statements the man made to prosecutors could be admitted in court.


The move was a setback for prosecutors with the state Department of Justice who filed the charges and initially called for pushing ahead with the hearing for Ken Chesebro, an attorney who advised Trump's campaign.

The preliminary hearing for two other defendants continued Monday.

The three former aides face 11 felony charges each related to their roles in the 2020 fake elector scheme. In addition to Chesebro, the other defendants are Jim Troupis, who was Trump's campaign attorney in Wisconsin, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020.

The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.

Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland said Monday that holding a separate evidentiary hearing to determine whether comments Chesebro made to Wisconsin investigators were given under an agreement not to be used against him in a trial “may be the best route.”



Chesebro made his comments to investigators voluntarily and there was no immunity agreement given to him in exchange for talking, said Assistant Wisconsin Attorney General Adrienne Blais.

She called the move by Chesebro's attorney to not allow his comments at the preliminary hearing “a clear sandbag.”

The surprise move is just the latest attempt by the three Trump aides to derail the case.

Troupis last week tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who the other two defendants joined in his motion, alleged that the judge did not write a previous order issued in August declining to dismiss the case. Instead, he accused the father of the judge's law clerk, a retired judge, of actually writing the opinion.

Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can't get a fair trial.

Hyland said he and a staff attorney alone wrote the order. Hyland also said Troupis presented no evidence to back up his claims of bias and refused to step down or delay the hearing.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the allegations.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, headed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, brought the felony forgery charges in 2024, alleging that the three defrauded the 10 Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020.

Prosecutors contend the three lied to the Republicans about how the certificate they signed would be used as part of a plan to submit paperwork to then-Vice President Mike Pence, falsely claiming that Trump had won the battleground state that year.

The complaint said a majority of the 10 Republicans told investigators that they were needed to sign the elector certificate indicating Trump had won only to preserve his legal options if a court changed the outcome of the election in Wisconsin.

A majority of the electors told investigators that they did not believe their signatures on the elector certificate would be submitted to Congress without a court ruling, the complaint said. Also, a majority said they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won without such a court ruling, the complaint said.

Andrew Schoeneck, a special agent in the criminal investigation division of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, detailed the state's case against the three former Trump associates under questioning from prosecutors during the preliminary hearing.

The Trump associates have argued that no crime took place.

Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 but fought to have the defeat overturned. He won the state in both 2016 and 2024.

The state charges against the Trump attorneys and aide are the only ones in Wisconsin. None of the electors have been charged. The 10 Wisconsin electors, Chesebro and Troupis all settled a lawsuit that was brought against them seeking damages.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the attorneys who are charged formerly worked on Trump's campaign, but are still practicing attorneys.

Scott Bauer, The Associated Press

Trump’s DOJ personally targets judge demanding answers on possible contempt: court filing


U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has spent much of the year clashing with President Donald Trump’s administration to identify who defied his court orders.

In March, Boasberg ordered that planes taking immigrants to the brutal prison in El Salvador turn around and bring individuals back to the U.S. The administration ignored the order, with El Salvador's president openly mocking the court claiming, "too late!"

On Friday, the DOJ rushed to a Washington, D.C., appeals court to request that Boasberg be removed from the case entirely, Politico explained.

The DOJ alleged in its emergency petition that Boasberg “is engaged in a pattern of retaliation and harassment, and has developed too strong a bias to preside over this matter impartially.”

They argued his push to uncover who should face contempt charges threatens separation of powers and attorney-client privilege.

“The forthcoming hearing has every appearance of an endless fishing expedition aimed at an ever-widening list of witnesses and prolonged testimony. That spectacle is not a genuine effort to uncover any relevant facts,” DOJ lawyers claimed.

The DOJ also attacked the judge for “doggedly pursuing" what they believe is "an idiosyncratic and misguided inquiry.”

Boasberg pressed prosecutors and the DOJ for answers almost immediately and began the process in April to uncover the official or officials who should be charged with contempt.

The Monday hearing aimed to call two witnesses: Erez Reuveni, who previously worked as an immigration attorney for the Justice Department and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, who was managing the process at the start.

Reuveni filed an official whistleblower disclosure outing former DOJ official Emil Bove in June for telling DOJ staff that the Trump administration should consider telling the courts "f—— you" if judges try to stop the deportations.

Text messages between Reuveni and his direct supervisor, August Flentje, show the two men referencing Bove’s comments.

Bove has since been confirmed as a judge to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Justice Department claimed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to proceed with the flights followed consultations with Bove, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and DHS counsel Joseph Mazzara — discussions it deems “privileged,” per Politico.

The DOJ tried to stop or delay last week’s hearing, but Boasberg wasn’t buying it.

“This inquiry is not some academic exercise. Approximately 137 men were spirited out of this country without a hearing and placed in a high-security prison in El Salvador, where many suffered abuse and possible torture, despite this Court’s order that they should not be disembarked,” the judge wrote. “The question the Court must now answer is whether this occurred via contumacious conduct by Government officials.”

Supreme Court set to boost Trump in bigger case than Dobbs — experts


The Supreme Court is poised to overturn a 90-year-old decision protecting the heads of independent federal agencies from firing by the president — a move more significant in the court’s rightward march than the 2022 decision to overturn the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, alarmed legal experts tell Raw Story.


“This is the most important case of the decade,” said Seth Chandler, professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Following oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter last week, most observers predict the Court will side with President Donald Trump in his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.

That will “further unleash massive corruption by this executive branch,” said Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability and author of Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.


‘Even more powerful’
Trump v. Slaughter revisits a 1935 case, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which concerned President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner over disagreements about New Deal policies.

The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting the president’s ability to fire independent agency officials.


Now, Dec. 8 arguments in front of the current, right-wing-dominated Court made it clear there’s likely no “path for Humphrey's Executor to survive,” Chandler said.

“You're really changing the structure of government and a precept of law on which Congress has relied for 90 years and delegated immense power to these so-called independent agencies, and if these independent agencies are no longer independent, but are basically subject to loyalty tests from the president, that really changes the way that our government functions.”

Harold Krent, professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, agreed that “Humphrey’s Executor is mostly dead.”

“For the most part the idea of an independent-expert-type agency will be over,” Krent said. “It's incredibly significant. It gives the president even more powerful control over these agencies.”



Along with the FTC, agencies likely to be affected are the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Krent said.

“It’s just a wide array of agencies which would almost for sure fall in the wake of the Slaughter case,” he said.

“It just means that there's more of a political edge to all agency investigations and policymaking, and so there is less of a check.”

Chandler said Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed by President Barack Obama, questioned whether “Congress would ever have given so much power to the agencies if it knew that they were going to be subject to the political control of the president.”

“In a post-Humphreys Executor world where Congress felt the people who took leadership positions in these agencies were immune from political firings by the president, they were willing to grant enormous powers to these agencies and basically make them a fourth branch of government,” Chandler said.


“But, now we have half of the deal being taken away. We have that the agencies are now subject to the political desires of the president, but they still have all the power that they did originally.”

‘Out of control’
Legal experts predict that the Court will rule 6-3 in Trump’s favor in Slaughter, along ideological lines.

“I think the majority is going to say Humphrey’s Executor was very dubious when it was enacted and that the agencies look quite different from the way they were conceived,” Chandler said.


The process of weakening Humphrey’s Executor was already in motion, Chandler said, pointing to a 2020 decision, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which allows the president to remove the leader of a single-headed agency at will.

It’s likely the same logic will apply to a multi-person commission, Chandler said.


“I think they're going to say that in some sense the die has already been cast, that Humphrey's Executor has been on life support for a decade, and that it's now time to pull the plug,” Chandler said.

Humphrey’s Executor was an explicit target of Project 2025, the hard-right leadership plan from the Heritage Foundation, Graves said.

Noting that the Court had already “chipped away” at Humphrey’s Executor, Project 2025 said: “The next conservative Administration should formally take the position that Humphrey's Executor violates the Constitution's separation of powers.”

Trump’s claim on the campaign trail that he had no involvement with Project 2025 “misled the American people grossly,” Graves said, adding that the Court has since matched Trump’s “aggression in trying to destroy long-standing rules.”

“That the Supreme Court is playing along with this and actually eagerly embracing it is a sign of how out of control and arrogant the Roberts Court is, because the easiest thing for this Court to do would be to uphold the lower courts that are following those long-standing precedents,” Graves said.


“Instead, it has sought to combine its counter-constitutional edict, giving Donald Trump immunity from criminal prosecution, which swept him back into the White House.

“It's been seeking to combine that ruling, giving Trump extraordinary, unprecedented and unwise powers, with a whole series of rulings through the shadow docket, and now through the primary docket, that further expand presidential power, and I would say so, expand it recklessly.”

‘Loyalty pledges’
After Trump v. Slaughter, Chandler said, he anticipates Trump will seek to extend his firing power to lower-level agency employees, because if the Supreme Court determines “the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and you take that literally, then it's hard to see why the decision wouldn't extend all the way down the federal bureaucracy.


“President Trump has not been shy about insisting that loyalty to him, personally and to his ideas, is extraordinarily important in government … even with Humphrey's Executor on life support, so I don't see why he would show any restraint once it's killed off,” he said.

“Could he require, essentially, loyalty pledges from mid-level clerks at the NLRB? Why couldn't he insist that they're part of the executive branch and that they are just acting as his delegates, and if they're unwilling to commit to him, why should they have a job?”


Krent agreed.

“The Heritage Foundation, that's what they had recommended in terms of giving the president absolute power over all federal employees, and there is the extreme version of the unitary executive.

“I don't think the Court's going to go there in this particular case, but that's certainly within the goals of the Trump administration, and so it's something the Court may have to face at a future date.”


Graves called giving the president the power to fire independent agency heads at will “a recipe for corruption.”

“The corruption that Trump is engaged in is manifesting on a daily or weekly basis,” she said.

“The idea that the president would be controlling the decisions of the FTC, which relate to an array of matters about corporate conglomeration, as he's basically trying to orchestrate who gets control of a major swath of media, including CNN — it’s extraordinary.”

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, is preparing to undergo a merger with Netflix or Paramount. Trump has called for selling CNN to new owners.

‘Rampant corruption’
Commissions leading federal agencies typically have split-party representation — which could also disappear following a ruling for Trump in Slaughter, Krent said.

“This whole idea of a balanced independent agency thinking about energy policy or labor policy, banking policy, consumer relations policy, that seems to be done,” Krent said.


That would allow Trump to enact his policies, such as tariffs, as he pleases.

“If he wants to just start changing even tax policy or energy policy or labor policy, he'll be able to do it by saying, ‘This is what I want you to do, or I fire you,’” Krent said.

“It would have all sorts of ramifications across the economy.”

Congress could theoretically limit the power of agencies by defunding them, “but not in reality,” Chandler said.

“It's just something that we took for granted, that you could have, in effect, a fourth branch of government in which immense power had been vested, and when you take that away, and you say it's all subject to the president's control, and you don't undo the prior delegations of power, that is a huge deal,” Chandler said.

A ruling in Trump’s favor will give him “far more power than the founders ever anticipated,” Chandler said.


Krent said overturning Humprey’s Executor “cuts against not only history, but precedence.”

“That could lead to the end of the civil service,” he said.

Graves said: “This would be yet another instance of the Roberts Court handing Donald Trump extraordinary powers that no president should have, and the presidents before him did not.

“This would return, in some ways, the United States to a previous era, which was really disreputable, where civil service appointments … were handed out as a part of a political spoils system, which was rampant with corruption.

“That's why the modern civil service system came to be over 100 years ago, to try to make sure that we would have people serving us at all levels of federal agencies who were well-qualified for those positions and not merely supplicants to the president.”

Krent said overturning Humphrey’ Executor would lead to “increasing politicization of policymaking across the government,” to “the detriment of the American people.”


“It may mean that you're going to have less expertise in government, less political party balance in terms of how these agencies work, and ultimately, that's against the congressional design.

“Regulation and policymaking will just be infused with the president's brand of whatever is politically convenient at the moment.”

Trump declares fentanyl a 'weapon of mass destruction'


President Donald Trump has designated fentanyl — a strong opioid painkiller that is widely used in medical settings — as a weapon of mass destruction in what could be a major escalation in his administration's efforts to topple the Venezuelan government.

Speaking in the Oval Office Monday during a ceremony to award a long-dormant medal to soldiers and marines who've been deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of his administration's immigration crackdown, Trump acknowledged that the medication is "very important for medicine, for anesthesia [and][various other things."

"When it's mixed with certain things, it becomes bad," he said.

The president claimed the “mixing” of fentanyl was taking place in Mexico and claimed his administration had seized “millions” of pills containing the drug in recent months. But after a long, unhinged digression about the governor of Colorado’s refusal to honor a pardon Trump purportedly issued to a former county clerk who was convicted of violating state election laws in a vain attempt to prove he won the 2020 election in that state, the president claimed Venezuela and other countries were sending the drug to American shores deliberately to kill Americans instead of to make profits and satisfy demand for the illegal narcotic.

“There's no doubt that America's adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States in part because they want to kill Americans. If this were a war, that would be one of the worst wars,” Trump said.

“They've destroyed a lot of families, because when they lose a child, or even if their child is heavily addicted, you lose that family, the family will never be the same.”



President Donald Trump shows a signed executive order classifying fentanyl as 'weapon of mass destruction' during an Oval Office event. (REUTERS)
He said the executive order he was signing would be “one more step to protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl flooding into our country” by designating the drug as a weapon of mass destruction, which he claimed kills up to 300,000 people each year.

The presidential directive tasks the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General with determining whether the Pentagon should provide the Justice Department with military resources for combatting fentanyl trafficking under a little-used section of U.S. law permitting the Justice Department to receive “assistance” from the military for an “emergency situation involving a weapon of mass destruction.”


It’s unclear whether Trump can legally invoke that part of the law, known as Section 282, to deal with fentanyl trafficking, but the president’s claim to designate the narcotic as a chemical weapon could be sufficient for him to do so.

U.S. law defines a “chemical weapon” as a “toxic chemical and its precursors” or a “munition or device, specifically designed to cause death or other harm through toxic properties of those toxic chemicals.”

The order also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to use employ the department’s counter-proliferation apparatus to “identify threat networks related to fentanyl smuggling” and use “WMD and nonproliferation-related threat intelligence” to “support the full spectrum of counter-fentanyl operations.”

Pulitzer board responds to Trump's lawsuit by demanding tax returns and medication list


Donald Trump's efforts to sue the Pulitzer Prize board over defamation claims took a turn for the president last week, according to a new report from Law & Crime, after the board demanded extensive documents in discovery pertaining to everything from his psychological history to his prescription medication use.


Trump first sued the board back in 2022 over a statement the board released defending prizes it awarded in 2018 to the New York Times and the Washington Post reporting related to collusion between his first presidential campaign and the Russian government, after Trump demanded that the prizes be rescinded. The board's statement explained that "two independent reviews" of the reports awarded in 2018 showed that no aspects of them were refuted by special counsel Robert Mueller's Russian collusion findings, despite Trump's claims.

In claiming defamation from this statement, Trump's lawsuit nevertheless called the Russia connection a "now-debunked theory," and alleged that he suffered reputational harm and damages from it.

As of Thursday, the case had reached the discovery phase, with the Pulitzer board submitting a 12-page filing with a "litany of broad discovery demands" for Trump's legal team. In addition to demanding more typical documents pertaining to Trump's various lawsuits and claims about the political impact of the Pulitzer Prizes, the board also requested a wide range of documents detailing much more personal and intimate details.

This includes "all" of the president's tax returns dating from 2015 to now, so as to show any potential financial harm caused by the Pulitzer board's actions. It also requested health records and prescription histories to demonstrate proof of Trump's claims of mental and physical anguish.

"To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken," the filing explained. "For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing."

Per the filing, Trump's legal team could potentially avoid providing some of these sensitive materials by deciding not to pursue damages specifically for the alleged harms they pertain to.

The board's filing also leaves open the possibility for Trump's team to claim that certain materials are privileged and cannot be provided, though it will have to explain why.

"With respect to your responses to the following Requests, if any information is withheld because of a claim of privilege, state the basis for your claim of privilege with respect to such information and the specific ground(s) on which the claim of privilege rests," the filing noted.