Republican Congress critters got the hell out of town Thursday and won't be back until June and left all this unfinished business in their wake lol

 Republicans lash out over $1.776B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund 

McConnell slams Blanche over ‘slush fund to pay people who assault cops’  

Republicans punt on reconciliation amid furious disagreement over ‘anti-weaponization’ fund  

House Republicans fume at Senate for punting immigration funding package  

House punts Iran war powers resolution vote   

Trump approval among Republicans at new low in Fox News poll   

Trump, facing GOP blowback, sends 5,000 troops to Poland  

(Trump orders withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany amid feud with Merz) 

When the going gets tough, cave lol

 DOJ drops criminal probe of Fed Chair Powell, removes hurdle for Warsh confirmation

Lori Chavez-Deremer fired before she could be grilled in an upcoming congressional hearing, same as Pam Bondi

Trump is tired of the bad PR episodes like the one he got from Kristi Noem.

 

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer leaves Trump cabinet, Keith Sonderling takes over 

  

Sources: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer Has Resigned

 ... “Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives,” Cheung wrote in a post on X. ... Two Republicans who speak with Trump told NOTUS they expected Trump to pull the trigger on removing Chavez-DeRemer on April 22, when she was due for what was expected to be a bruising hearing in Congress. ...

Kristi Noem

 

Pam Bondi

Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Why did Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick lie about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein?

 Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show

... Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who at one point lived next door to Epstein, told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, deciding after taking a tour of Epstein's New York townhouse, "I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again."

However, it appears Epstein and Lutnick continued to maintain contact and emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinks in 2011. 

The following year, the couple and their four children planned a visit to Epstein's island, Little St. James, emails show. Lutnick was invited for lunch on Dec. 24, 2012, and later, Epstein's assistant wrote on behalf of Epstein, "it was nice seeing you."

Their Adfin deal was signed four days later. ... 

By the time Epstein and Lutnick agreed to buy stakes in Adfin, it had been more than four years since Epstein agreed to enter a guilty plea to Florida state charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. The case brought forth allegations of far broader sex trafficking and victimization of girls, but it wasn't until 2019 that Epstein was charged with federal felonies including trafficking. He died in jail in the weeks after his arrest. ...

Epstein files: Congressional lawmakers call for Trump Commerce chief Lutnick to resign, or be fired

... Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., urged Lutnick to step down after The New York Times reported the Trump ally interacted “regularly” with Epstein, according to files released by the Department of Justice relating to the notorious sex offender. Massie was the lead Republican on the Epstein Files Transparency Act that compelled the release of the Epstein files.

“He should just resign,” Massie said on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.” “Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted.”

He added: “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.” ...

Mad King Ludwig's disgusting vendetta against Jerome Powell escalates into DOJ criminal probe of Fed Chair's oversight of building renovations

 What this really is is Mad King Ludwig's builder's envy. He thinks he should be in charge of the literal remaking of every Washington edifice, just as he thinks he should be in charge of everything else, including interest rates.

Powell's term expires on May 15, but the lunatic we put in charge of the country just can't let Powell fade away without picking this disgusting fight over nothing.

The Department of Justice should be ashamed of itself, but like most MAGAts, it is incapable of shame. 

Watch here. 

 

 

Trump's Department of Injustice will violate the law again today by not releasing the Epstein files

"One law for me, another for thee".

 

Jeffrey Epstein: DOJ expects to release some—but not all—files Friday despite legal deadline

 

Jeffrey Epstein: Dems say DOJ breaking law with plan to release files over time

 

So Trump's border czar took a bribe last fall in an FBI sting operation, a paper bag with $50k cash in it

 

 The Trump Department of Injustice dropped the case.

So where's the money then? In Bob Menendez' closet? 

 

 

Trump invokes emergency powers yet again, takes over DC police for 30 days under Home Rule Act over non-existent crime surge except against his own people, deploys National Guard

This is pissing-match security theatre: "If Biden can do it so can I".

 

Trump puts Washington, DC, police under federal control, deploys National Guard

 

... his emergency control is set to expire after a maximum of 30 days, according to the statute. That can be extended, but only if Congress passes a law authorizing it.

While Trump has frequently complained about crime in the district, violent crime there has fallen to a 30-year low as of January, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. ...

Trump's DOJ brings Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador to face a slew of criminal charges it has cooked up against him in the interim since the Supremes ordered him returned in April

 

Watch out, Elon, you may be next.

 Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to face immigrant smuggling charges after wrongful deportation

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face criminal charges involving an alleged undocumented immigrant smuggling ring Friday, months after the Maryland resident was wrongfully deported to a prison in his native El Salvador. ...

The indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia and others from 2016 through 2025 “conspired to bring undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, ultimately passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas.”

The grand jury that issued the indictment found that he made more than 100 trips smuggling thousands of immigrants. ...

In a post on X on Friday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele wrote, “As I said in the Oval Office:1. I would never smuggle a terrorist into the United States. 2. ⁠I would never release a gang member onto the streets of El Salvador.”

“That said, we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse,” Bukele wrote. ...

 

 

 

Appointed 41 years ago by Ronald Reagan, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals shreds Trump's contempt of court

 ... The administration is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” ...

Wilkinson and the two other judges on the 4th Circuit panel rejected the administration’s appeal of an April 10 order from Xinis directing the administration to “take all available steps” to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.”

Wilkinson zeroed in on the Justice Department’s admission that it had “mistakenly” deported Abrego Garcia.

“Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?” Wilkinson wrote. ...

Wilkinson warned of a dangerously slippery slope on the horizon. “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” he wrote.

“And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?” ...

More.

Holy cow, a seventh prosecutor resigns over the renegade DOJ attempt to toss the Eric Adams case

 

A seventh federal prosecutor resigned Friday over the Department of Justice’s controversial order to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

The prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, in a blistering letter to top DOJ official Emil Bove, said “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion” to dismiss the Adams case.

“But it was never going to be me,” wrote Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor in Adams’ case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

On Thursday, Scotten’s boss, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned in protest over Bove’s order to toss the case. ... 

Scotten is a Harvard Law School grad, who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq in the Special Forces. He also served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Roberts’ fellow conservative was sitting on a lower court.

More.

The new Attorney General Pam Bondi is really working overtime to accumulate obloquy. 

Banana Republican Donald Trump denies meddling in New York Mayor Eric Adams case as 6 top prosecutors quit over DOJ dismissal order

 

 ... After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case Thursday, the matter was reassigned to John Keller, the acting head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who then also refused to dismiss the case and quit, NBC reported. ...

Acting DOJ criminal division chief Kevin Driscoll also resigned Thursday after refusing to accept the Adams case.

At least three other senior officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section quit after that following a meeting with the deputy attorney general. ...

Sassoon had been the lead prosecutor at the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison.

More.

 

The legal system is about to be clogged with multiple battles over Trump's second and imperial presidency, which has deployed Elon Musk as the embodiment of the line-item veto which it does not possess

It's a strange day when I find myself agreeing with Ed Markey.

. . . “The courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop Musk, are going to stop Trump,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.

“Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president, Article Three is the judiciary. There is not an Article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do,” Markey said. “They are trying to rewrite constitutional law in this country.” . . .

Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings — even one handed down by the Supreme Court?

This is a particularly acute matter because it’s the Justice Department, which is now operating under Trump’s firm hand, that’s responsible for enforcing the law. The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.

“That is the doomsday scenario,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and NYU law professor, told CNN’s Burnett. “So far, they are complying with all the court orders, but what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?” Goodman asked.

“If they really want to push it, we are in a real constitutional crisis.”

From the story here.

As if the pre-emptive pardons of Fauci, Milley, and the Jan 6 lynch mob weren't bad enough, Biden pardoned his own siblings and their families at the last second

 Meanwhile, earlier in December Biden's own Department of Justice warned Jan 6 "insurrectionists" that accepting a pardon from Trump would amount to a confession of guilt.

So Fauci, Milley, et alia are all ipso facto guilty.

Trump's European-style coalition cabinet is full of liberals and conservatism is dead LOL, says tormented son of a member of the John Birch Society

 

 A pro-abortion RFK Jr. at HHS. A pro-union Chavez-DeRemer at Labor. Lefty Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. And gay George Soros adviser Scott Bessent at Treasury. 

The team represents the Trump worldview: Traditional conservatism is dead — and its biggest, lifelong advocates neutered to the point of irrelevance.          

Mike Allen of AXIOS reminds me of no one so much as George W. Bush: "There is no conservative movement. I redefined the Republican Party".

I think Mike is in a perpetual state of PTSD because his father was a John Bircher.

Donald Trump's problem is that no real conservative wants to be associated with his lame duck brand, so he's got to find people SOMEWHERE to serve in his hapless administration. Might as well be lefties and liberals and Jeb Bush retreads like Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice after the Gaetz flameout.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump and George W. Bush are exactly the same person, except Georgie actually got more than 49.83% of the vote.

 

FBI quietly revises 2022 violent crime data without explanation after gaslighting the country for a year: 2.1% decline becomes 4.5% increase, DOJ report shows 55.4% increase in violent crime under Biden-Harris

 The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release. ... 

It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers. ...

The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed? ...

While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers [from the U.S. Department of Justice] show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large. ... 

At the beginning of this year, the media was running headlines like National Public Radio’s: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.” “At some point in 2022 … there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” NPR claimed. But now the FBI has itself admitted its violent crime numbers were way off. ...

A Gallup survey late last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that they were wrong.

Read the full story here.

Tim Walz locked down Minnesota for 15 months based on an hysterical projection of COVID deaths, and presided over $500 million of George Floyd rioting damage and $250 million of Somali COVID fraud

 

 On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Story. 

Oh yeah, and Tim Walz thinks Ilhan Omar is just wonderful.

Biden DOJ under Garland and FBI under Wray vigorously prosecute non-violent pro-lifers under the Face Act while turning a blind eye to hundreds of violent pro-abortion attacks

 

My organization has been highlighting this dangerous double-standard, warning Americans that the Justice Department and FBI are exploiting the FACE Act to target and harass individuals like Eva who stand in the way of their extremist agendas. 

Just this month, a man named Elliot Bennet set fire to a Catholic Church in New Jersey. This was the third time Bennet had committed acts of violence or vandalism against the church since 2018, the 21st attack on a Catholic Church in 2024, the 274th attack since May 2022 and the 412th attack since May 2020. 

Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute Bennet for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations. It has also failed to federally prosecute a single one of the more than 400 egregious FACE Act violations against Catholic Churches since May 2020, or to meaningfully address the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers across the nation since May 2022. 

These attacks don’t involve prayer and hymns. They’ve involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners. They have cost at least $25 million in damages to Catholic Churches, while intimidating hundreds of peaceful Catholic and pro-life communities. 

More.

They're not going to prosecute Joe Biden for willfully retaining and disclosing classified materials, but they are going to let grandpa Applesauce Brains stay president lol

 From special counsel Robert Hur's report here:

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not
remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview
when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?"), and
forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I
still Vice President?"). He did not remember, even within several years, when his
son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan
debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said
he "had a real difference" of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact,
Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo
to President Obama.

Our country is a giant prank played on the American people.

 Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,’ special counsel says

But the special counsel, Robert Hur, said he was declining to prosecute Biden over his handling of classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Biden’s entries about national security.

This is James Comey not prosecuting Hillary all over again. 

But they will prosecute Trump in his classified documents case, upcoming. 

This double standard will be all the reason people want and need to vote for Donald Trump again.

Peter Navarro chose allegiance to the separate and equal power of the Executive, of which he was a part and which the Legislative transgressed in a political witchhunt

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department wants former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to spend six months behind bars after being convicted of criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena. ...

“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” prosecutors wrote in Thursday’s sentencing memo.

 More.