Search results for tag #trump
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#JPMorgan said in its report that it was flagging about 4,700 transactions, totaling more than $1 billion, because they were potentially related to reports of human trafficking involving #Epstein. It also mentioned Epstein’s wire transfers to #Russian #banks & sensitivities around “his relationships with two U.S. presidents.” Epstein at times was close with President #Trump & President #BillClinton.
Weeks after #Epstein died in federal custody in 2019…, #JPMorganChase filed a report alerting the #US govt to tens of millions of suspicious transactions involving him & prominent #WallStreet & #business figures.
The report that #JPMorgan filed identified transactions with #LeonBlack, the co-founder of private equity firm #ApolloGlobalManagement; #GlennDubin, a hedge fund manager; [#Trump’s & Epstein’s atty] lawyer #AlanDershowitz; & trusts controlled by #LesWexner, the retail tycoon.
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The memo does not specify what kind of litigation the volunteers would be asked to do, but it says that, ideally, attorneys would have “significant experience” in #immigration & administrative law in addition to general prosecution & litigation experience.
…This week’s memo says the #DOJ asked for 20 lawyers to help support its offices in #Memphis, where the #NationalGuard has been deployed by #Trump; 12 for West #Texas — specifically for the cities of #ElPaso, #DelRio, & #Midland — & 3 lawyers & 2 paralegals for #LasCruces, #NewMexico.
The memo appears to be the latest effort to send #military & civilian #attorneys working for the #Pentagon to the #DOJ, this time to staff offices along the #US southern border or where federal #immigration enforcement ops are taking place.
Last month, the #Pentagon also approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the DOJ to serve as temporary immigration judges in a separate effort. The #Trump admin increasingly has tapped the military to bolster its immigration crackdown….
“I am directing you to collectively identify 48 attorneys & 4 paralegals from within your Military Department who may be suitable for detail” to the #DOJ to act as special assistant #USattorneys, #Hegseth wrote in a memo dated Monday that was sent to all 4 services & the chai of the #JointChiefs of Staff.
#Hegseth orders the #military to detail
dozens of #attorneys to the #DOJ, AP learns
#Defense Secretary #PeteHegseth has ordered the military to provide dozens of lawyers to the Justice Department for temporary assignments in Memphis & near the #US - #Mexico border that could run through next fall, according to a memo released this week & reviewed by The AP.
#law #immigration #MartialLaw #MilitaryState #Trump
https://apnews.com/article/hegseth-military-attorneys-immigration-justice-department-cb352bdb6c1d9d6d68f79642d69c6363
Intentional use of lethal force is allowed only as a last resort against someone representing “an imminent threat to life,” she said. “Otherwise, it would amount to a violation of the right of life and constitute extrajudicial killings.”
The strikes are taking place “outside the context” of armed conflict or active hostilities, Shamdasani said.
She said Türk believed “airstrikes by the United States of America on boats in the Caribbean & in the Pacific violate international #HumanRights #law.”
…Shamdasani noted the US explanations of the efforts as an anti-drug & counter-terrorism campaign, but said countries have long agreed that the fight against illicit drug trafficking is a law-enforcement matter governed by “careful limits” placed on the use of lethal force.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spox for Türk’s office, relayed his message on Friday at a regular #UN briefing: “These attacks & their mounting human cost are unacceptable. The US must halt such attacks & take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”
The #UN #HumanRights chief said Friday that #US #military strikes against boats in the #Caribbean Sea & eastern #Pacific Ocean allegedly carrying illegal drugs from #SouthAmerica are “unacceptable” & must stop.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk called for an #investigation into the strikes, in what appeared to mark the first such condemnation of its kind from a United Nations organization.
#criminal #law #murder #Trump
https://apnews.com/article/un-us-military-strikes-south-america-ed0ce092af5ad2c64b34ed51f8ab59cc
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"The Republican party is now a full co-conspirator in the coverup. Epstein has become a Republican problem, not simply a Trump problem.
There are so many instances of Republican complicity in the Trump administration’s authoritarianism that it can be a challenge to keep attention on Republican complicity in covering up Epstein’s crimes. But it’s all of a piece."
~ William Kristol
"The mainstream media has become part of the [Trump Republican] narrative machine."
~ Aaron Parnas
#Trump #media #fascism #NoKings #NewYorkTimes #WallStreetJournal
/2
https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/important-evening-news-update-d17
"The leadership of The New York Times and WSJ continue to downplay and minimize mass demonstrations while editors of smaller outlets do a better job communicating the growing pro-democracy movement."
~ Media and Democracy Project
#Trump #media #fascism #NoKings #NewYorkTimes #WallStreetJournal
/1
https://mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com/p/analysis-of-no-kings-coverage-the
"Just between you and me, if our navy is picking up survivors from a burning boat…or two burning boats…they could also be picking up the drug packages that Hegseth’s own videos show floating around said burning boats and have the proof that Democrats on Capitol Hill have been demanding."
"No defendants, no evidence, no lawyers, no courts, no judges, just dead people in the water. Trump’s rocket strikes on alleged drug boats in the Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific are his dream of what law enforcement should be."
~ Lucian K. Truscott
#Trump #Hegseth #military #murder #boats
/2
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/no-defendants-no-evidence-no-lawyers
"The U.S. military on Wednesday killed another four people accused by the Trump administration of trafficking narcotics by sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced, as the administration’s lethal campaign continued to expand."
~ Helene Cooper and Robert Jimison
#Trump #Hegseth #military #murder #boats
/1
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/us/politics/military-drug-boat-strikes.html
"So what went wrong? I’d attribute it to a combination of policy ignorance, visceral hatred of doing anything that helps people in need, and the Epstein files."
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare #Project2025 #cruelty #Epstein #coverup
/12
"Why are these terrible things happening? At a basic level they’re happening because Republicans want them to happen. ...
But it’s clear that Republicans messed up badly on the implementation of Project 2025. Immense cruelty was always part of the plan, but policy wasn’t supposed to get this cruel, this soon."
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare #Project2025 #cruelty
/11
"Federal funding for SNAP, the nutritional aid program still often referred to as food stamps, ends tonight. This will have catastrophic impacts on 42 million Americans, the great majority of them children, elderly or disabled.
Millions more Americans are about to discover that health insurance has become vastly more expensive, in many cases unaffordable."
~ Paul Krugman
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/10
"Trump couldn't (legitimately) win a third term If he tried.
The emperor has no polls. ...
What’s astonishing about the media’s 'third term' coverage is how it doesn’t clearly state the obvious: Voters are openly rejecting Trump, as seen in poll after poll."
~ Stephen Robinson
#Trump #MikeJohnson #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom #ApprovalRatings
/9
"According to a Washington Post–ABC survey, more Americans blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than blame Democrats by a margin of 45 to 33, and Trump’s approval rating continues to move downward, with the presidential approval average reported by Fifty Plus One at 41.3% approval and 55.1% disapproval, a –14 split."
#Trump #MikeJohnson #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom #ApprovalRatings
/8
(continued from /6)
"bulldozing the East Wing of the White House to build a gold-plated ballroom that will dwarf the existing White House, and traveling to Asia, where South Korean leadership courted him by giving him a gold crown and serving him brownies topped with edible gold, blaming any funding shortfall on Democrats is a hard sell."
#Trump #MikeJohnson #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom #ApprovalRatings
/7
(continued from /5)
"the Treasury finding $20 billion to prop up Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina, Johnson refusing to bring the House into regular session to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, and President Donald J. Trump demanding $230 million in damages from the American taxpayer," (continued in /7)
#Trump #MikeJohnson #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/6
The #filibuster is a long-standing tactic in the #Senate to delay or block votes on legislation by keeping the debate running. It requires 60 votes in a full Senate to overcome a filibuster, giving Democrats a check on the 53-seat Republican majority that led to the start of the Oct. 1 shutdown when the new fiscal year began.
#Trump’s call to terminate the filibuster could alter the ways the Senate & congressional dealmaking operate….
"House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to pin the upcoming catastrophic lapse in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding on the Democrats. But with the U.S. Department of Agriculture sitting on $6 billion in funds Congress appropriated for just such an event," (continued in /6)
~ Heather Cox Richardson
#Trump #MikeJohnson #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/5
#Trump says #Senate should scrap the #filibuster to end the government #shutdown
Trump is calling on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, so that the Republican majority can bypass Democrats & reopen the federal government.
“THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump posted late Thursday night on his social media site, Truth Social.
#law
https://apnews.com/article/government-shutdown-effects-trump-update-democrats-95b986b83b9802fe7a8374572fcd86f0
"Of those 41 million who receive SNAP benefits, 39% are children. In two days, those children will not have access to food benefits anymore, because Republicans, especially Donald, don’t care if children go hungry."
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/4
"It is Day 30 of the Republican government shutdown. It’s also Donald’s shutdown, because the Republicans shut the government down at Donald’s behest. And there is no end in sight apparently."
~ Mary Trump
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/3
"On Thursday, it became clear that Trump and congressional Republicans have decided to starve Americans to bully Democrats into capitulating in the shutdown negotiations."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/2
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/trump-plans-to-starve-americans-to
"A nation that worships wealth will always sacrifice the poor."
~ Jemar Tisby
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #EconomicElites #SNAP #food #children #hunger #healthcare
/1
https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/snap-cuts-and-the-sin-of-greed
This is why the pretense of some social media folks that these questions — what to do about the rise of global fascism, e.g. — are isolated to the US and should be hidden behind silly labels like #uspol is so fatuous.
What happens in the US affects what happens elsewhere, whether we like or not.
And we can choose to whistle past the graveyard and pretend all is well and we're superior to the Americans — or not.
"How would you behave if your democracy was being dismantled? In most western countries, that used to be an academic question. Societies where this process had happened, such as Germany in the 1930s, seemed increasingly distant. ...
As it often does, the US is demonstrating what the future could be for much of the world."
~ Andy Beckett
Finally, a brief by three Cato Institute researchers refutes the extralegal doomsaying the admin uses, perhaps to compensate for the weakness of its legal arguments. But synthetic catastrophizing is unlikely to sway the justices.
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers #SCOTUS #Trump #tariffs
A brief from NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity stresses the “major questions” doctrine, which protects #Congress from having its words twisted to unintended purposes. It holds that Congress does not cryptically delegate enormous powers. Presidents claiming such delegated powers must cite specific congressional language, absent from the #IEEPA. #Trump’s use of the IEEPA is “unheralded, transformative, & economically & politically significant.” And unauthorized.
A bipartisan group of legal scholars & fmr govt officials argues that #Congress never intended the #IEEPA as a “backdoor” for turning the taxing power into “an executive instrument” that allows presidents to restructure the #economy. In the IEEPA, Congress avoided standardless, open-ended delegation of power by using 7 different verbs, but not “tax” or its synonyms, in empowering the president to do things.
https://libertyjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Stamped-Motion-and-Brief.pdf
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers #SCOTUS #Trump #tariffs
A brief from a broad spectrum of economists argues: Even if the #IEEPA permits imposing tariffs (it’s never been so used), #tariffs would not “deal with” (IEEPA lang) #trade deficits. Besides, over the past 50yrs, in any given year, most countries have run trade deficits, as the #US did for all but 3 yrs between 1800 & 1870, while it was industrializing. Furthermore, the effects of higher tariffs on trade balance are generally “small & insignificant.”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-1287/380468/20251024103703664_24-1287%2025-250%20ac%20Economists.pdf
#law #SCOTUS #Trump
The IEEPA was written to provide presidents with “a temporary boost in power” (Brennan), while preventing the use of seismic emergency powers, allegedly implied by Congress, to address chronic conditions. Otherwise, as a justice wrote in 1952, “emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.” Besides, as a percentage of GDP, the overall U.S. trade imbalance is significantly less than 20 years ago (Brennan).
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers #SCOTUS #Trump #tariffs
Brennan, too, says, in effect, that if Congress can address a condition, it is not an emergency. Emergencies are sudden, acute, unforeseen, extraordinary, dangerous and require instant action. The president sabotages his case by saying today’s “emergency” is a “persistent” condition — 50 years of trade deficits. They have coincided with soaring U.S. prosperity.
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers #SCOTUS #Trump #tariffs
(Neither does the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which also is invoked by his defenders.)
Goldwater cites numerous instances of judicial review of claims of emergencies. Judicial review of an executive’s assertion that an emergency exists is comparable to review of a legislature’s assertion that a particular piece of legislation is constitutional.
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers #SCOTUS #Trump #tariffs
This momentous case must either undermine or buttress the #Constitution’s architecture: the #SeparationOfPowers. Six amicus briefs explain why.
The conservative Goldwater Institute & the liberal Brennan Center separately argue that the statute #Trump says gives him unreviewable power to impose taxes (which #tariffs are) of whatever amount, & for as long as, he chooses (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977), does no such thing.
#PresidentialPower & #SCOTUS’ own stature ride on this case
Decorum might dissolve during oral arguments on Wednesday in the Supreme Court. The justices might guffaw when #Trump admin lawyers say: The president’s #tariffs should be exempt from judicial review because they respond to an “emergency,” emergencies, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder, & presidents alone are our designated beholders.
#law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/31/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-congress-constitution/
"The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said thousands are taking second jobs, straining focus and safety, while the FAA acknowledged delays affecting tens of thousands of flights each day as the crisis deepens."
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #MikeJohnson #food #SNAP #healthcare #economy #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom #AirTrafficControllers #AirTravel
/19
"Flight delays surged nationwide as the ongoing government shutdown left air traffic controllers working without pay, prompting safety warnings from their union about exhaustion, financial stress, and understaffing."
~ Aaron Parnas
#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #MikeJohnson #food #SNAP #healthcare #economy #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom #AirTrafficControllers #AirTravel
/18
https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/breaking-senate-republicans-rebuke-2aa
Citing AP investigation, senators demand answers on use of full-body #restraints during #deportations
A “near-total secrecy” surrounding deportation flights & the use of #FullBodyRestraints onboard is raising “serious #HumanRights concerns,” a group of 11 Democratic U.S. senators wrote in a letter Thursday to top immigration officials.
#Trump #law #immigration #WRAP #HumanRights
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-deportations-wrap-senators-letter-55acd1dc304ce16c9f560d271819e78e?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2025-10-30-Deportation+flights
Later, the desperate desire of AG #MerrickGarland & President Joe #Biden to avoid any appearance of #partisanship led the #DOJ to put off looking into #evidence of a *potential* #crime & gave #Trump an advantage that few appreciated at the time. Garland’s delays softened the ground & would eventually help Trump remake the #Justice Department into his own cudgel.
#law #democracy #Constitution #3CoEqualBranchesOfGovernment #GiftArticle
It’s true #Trump started it all when, in his first presidency, he tried to bend this venerable #law enforcement agency for his own #personal & #political #gain. Trump frequently failed in that effort, but, as learned after 2 years of reporting, all the while he was quietly succeeding in destabilizing the institution’s foundations — & weakening its resolve with his brand of bare-knuckle attacks. That imperiled the rule of law that has long assured all Americans impartial & fair #justice.
#Trump isn’t solely responsible for this. Through hundreds of interviews that Leonnig & longtime WaPo colleague Aaron Davis & conducted, we learned first hand how a mixture of fear & stubborn bravery, gutter politics & noble intentions ultimately paved the way for the unraveling of the #DOJ we are now witnessing. This decline started Trump’s first term but gained momentum in the #Biden presidency.
#law #democracy #Constitution #3CoEqualBranchesOfGovernment #GiftArticle #Navarro #Justice
All It Took for #Trump to Dismantle the #Justice Dept.
by Carol Leonnig
The #DOJ under Trump is still standing. But inside, he & his lieutenants have taken a wrecking ball to this core pillar of our nation’s #governing system.
#law #democracy #Constitution #3CoEqualBranchesOfGovernment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/opinion/trump-biden-justice-department.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xU8.3jB1.uQ7in8LYbgxw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare