<....The Associated Press also reported last week that Health and Human Services officials shared the data of Medicaid enrollees in California, Illinois, Washington state, and D.C. with Homeland Security. Each of these states offers Medicaid to non–U.S. citizens, but they use their own state dollars to pay for it. Several states extend Medicaid to their residents regardless of their immigration status, with some only offering it to children and pregnant women, while others also offer it to all qualifying adults.

Historically, Medicaid data is treated as ultrasensitive and never shared with other federal agencies, particularly for immigration enforcement. California Rep. Laura Friedman noted as much, posting to X that “We should never use a person’s need to go to the doctor against them. This will only lead to more chaos and pain in our communities.”

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs extended her temporary restraining order against the federal government, preventing it from implementing Trump’s executive order banning international students from studying at Harvard University. So for now, one of the most elite universities in the world can continue enrolling foreign students, which last academic year made up about 27 percent of the school’s total enrollment.

This legal battle is far from over, as Burroughs’ order will remain in effect until June 23, but during a court hearing on Monday she said she’ll be issuing a formal opinion in this case before then. Harvard requested that Burroughs issue a preliminary injunction so it could still continue enrolling international students while this case plays out in court, while Justice Department lawyers stood by Trump’s order, arguing it was well within his authority to regulate immigration under federal law.

Harvard has been on the Trump administration’s chopping block ever since it refused to roll over and comply with a list of demands that would essentially allow the federal government deep oversight into the private school’s inner workings—unlike Columbia University. Government agencies quickly began pulling the plug on millions of dollars of research funding, and Harvard sued. The Trump administration decided to double down and again went after the school, but this time through immigration. In late May, Homeland Security tried revoking Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which allows schools to accept and enroll international students. About two weeks later, Trump issued an executive order restricting any international students from attending the school.>

<Russ Vought’s relationship with Republican appropriators was already strained. Then he started talking about pursuing the ultimate end-run around their funding power heading into the fall.

The White House budget director has been persistently touting the virtues of “pocket rescissions,” a tactic he has floated as a way to codify the spending cuts Elon Musk made while atop his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and which the federal government’s top watchdog says is illegal.

On Capitol Hill, leading GOP appropriators see Vought’s comments as another shot against them in an escalating battle with the Trump administration over Congress’ “power of the purse.” And they warn that the budget director’s adversarial posture hinders their relationship with the White House as they work to head off a government shutdown in just over three months.

“Pocket rescissions are illegal, in my judgment,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a brief interview this week, “and contradict the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds.”

To hear Vought tell it, a “pocket rescission” is a legitimate tool at the executive branch’s disposal. In such a scenario, President Donald Trump would issue a formal request to claw back funding, similar to the $9.4 billion package he sent lawmakers this month to cancel congressionally approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

But in this case, the memo would land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin Oct. 1. By withholding the cash for that full timeframe — regardless of action by Congress — the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

The dizzying ploy is another means toward the same goal Trump has been chasing since Inauguration Day: to spend less money than Congress has explicitly mandated in law. But the Government Accountability Office says the maneuver is unlawful, and the GOP lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal funding are wary that Vought is now talking about it in the open.

“I understand we want to use all the arrows in our quiver, and he wants to use all his,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of Vought in an interview. “But every time you pull out an arrow, you have to be ready for the consequences, right?”

Joyce continued: “It’s going to change the course of conversations and how each side works toward coming to resolution going forward.”

Vought declined last week to elaborate on his intentions, when pressed in person on Capitol Hill about his plans to use the ploy in the coming months. His office also did not return a request for comment. However, the budget director laid out a detailed argument for the maneuver on television earlier in the month — then mentioned it again as he left a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson and then during a later hearing with House appropriators.

“The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions, later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed,” Vought said on CNN. “It’s a provision that has been rarely used. But it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools.”

Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, recently warned that the gambit is “a bad idea” that “undermines Congress’ authority,” after saying last month that he thinks “it’s illegal” for a president to withhold funding lawmakers approved.

But many top Republican appropriators — while scoffing at Vought’s comments — aren’t willing to engage in rhetorical arguments about the bounds of the president’s spending power.

“Talking is one thing. We’ll see if he actually does it,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the military, said about Vought’s comments.

“He’s got his ideas,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for funding the departments of Transportation and Housing.

“I’d have some concerns about it,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services — all targets of Trump’s deepest funding cuts.

Tension has been building for months between those Republican appropriators and Vought, who has a history of testing the limits of funding law: When he served in this same role during Trump’s first administration, he froze aid to Ukraine in a move that helped set the stage for the president’s first impeachment trial.....>

<....Republican funding leaders are irked that the White House has yet to deliver a full budget request, which appropriators rely upon to write their dozen funding measures. Vought has already left open the door to withholding the new money if the administration doesn’t agree with the spending priorities in the final bills.

They also say the president’s budget director and other Cabinet secretaries have withheld essential information about how they are using federal cash as the Trump administration fights off more than 100 legal challenges around the country. The suits are seeking to overturn the White House’s freezing of billions of dollars Congress already approved for myriad programs and agencies.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) issued a rare rebuke of Vought this spring for taking down the public website showing how agencies are expected to disburse federal dollars.

But the Oklahoma Republican generally avoids any public criticism of the Trump administration and is not sounding off now about Vought’s embrace of pocket rescissions. Cole said this month that he would “look at each individual” request the White House sends to claw back funding, now that the House has passed the $9.4 billion package to nix money for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

That package of funding cuts now sits in the Senate, where some top Republicans are interested in tweaking the plan to protect funding for preventing AIDS around the world and supporting PBS programming in their home states. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested Vought’s public comments about using pocket rescissions could be intended to encourage reluctant senators to clear it.

“Maybe that’s the way to let members know: Vote for the ones he sends up,” Johnson said, noting that he would be “totally supportive” of Vought using the tactic this fall.

Another Senate fiscal hawk, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he believes the law “does allow for pocket rescissions.”

“I think the president should have more power not to spend money,” Paul told reporters last week. “So if we have a way to reduce spending, by all means, we should use it.”

No court has ruled on the president’s power to cancel funding by sending Congress a request and then running out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. But GAO has twice weighed in.

In 2018, the watchdog found that the law “does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.” Vought, though, likes to cite an older GAO conclusion from 1975: It determined that Congress was unable to reject then-President Gerald Ford’s requests to claw back funding “in time to prevent the budget authority from lapsing.”>

<Millions of Americans who have waited decades for fast internet connections will keep waiting after the Trump administration threw a $42 billion high-speed internet program into disarray.

The Commerce Department, which runs the massive Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, announced new rules in early June requiring states — some of which were ready to begin construction later this year — to solicit new bids from internet service providers.

The delay leaves millions of rural Americans stranded in places where health care is hard to access and telehealth is out of reach.

“This does monumental harm to rural America,” said Christopher Ali, a professor of telecommunications at Penn State.

The Biden-era program, known as BEAD, was hailed when created in 2021 as a national plan to bring fast internet to all, including millions in remote rural areas.

A yearlong KFF Health News investigation, with partner Gray Media’s InvestigateTV, found nearly 3 million people live in mostly rural counties that lack broadband as well as primary care and behavioral health care providers. In those same places, the analysis found, people live sicker and die earlier on average.

The program adopts a technology-neutral approach to “guarantee that American taxpayers obtain the greatest return on their broadband investment,” according to the June policy notice. The program previously prioritized the use of fiber-optic cable lines, but broadband experts like Ali said the new focus will make it easier for satellite-internet providers such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper to win federal funds.

“We are going to connect rural America with technologies that cannot possibly meet the needs of the next generation of digital users,” Ali said. “They’re going to be missing out.”

Republicans have criticized BEAD for taking too long, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick vowed in March to get rid of its “woke mandates.” The revamped “Benefit of the Bargain BEAD Program,” which was released with a fact sheet titled “Ending Biden’s Broadband Burdens,” includes eliminating some labor and employment requirements and obligations to perform climate analyses on projects.

The requirement for states to do a new round of bidding with internet service providers makes it unclear whether states will be able to connect high-speed internet to all homes, said Drew Garner, director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Garner said the changes have caused “pure chaos” in state broadband offices. More than half the states have been knocked off their original timeline to deliver broadband to homes, he said.

The change also makes the program more competitive for satellite companies and wireless providers such as Verizon and T-Mobile, Garner said.

Garner analyzed in March what the possible increase in low-Earth-orbit satellites would mean for rural America. He found that fiber networks are generally more expensive to build but that satellites are more costly to maintain and “much more expensive” to consumers.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick said in a June release that the new direction of the program would be efficient and deliver high-speed internet “at the right price.” The agency overseeing BEAD declined to release a specific amount it hopes to save with the restructuring.

More than 40 states had already begun selecting companies to provide high-speed internet and fill in gaps in underserved areas, according to an agency dashboard created to track state progress.

In late May, the website was altered and columns showing the states that had completed their work with federal regulators disappeared. Three states — Delaware, Louisiana, and Nevada — had reached the finish line and were waiting for the federal government to distribute funding....>

<....The tracker, which KFF Health News saved in March, details the steps each state made in their years-long efforts to create location-based maps and bring high-speed internet to those missing service. West Virginia had completed selection of internet service providers and a leaked draft of its proposed plan shows the state was set to provide fiber connections to all homes and businesses.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) praised removal of some of the hurdles that delayed implementation and said she thought her state would not have to make very many changes to existing plans during a call with West Virginia reporters.

West Virginia’s broadband council has worked aggressively to expand in a state where 25% of counties lack high-speed internet and health providers, according to KFF Health News’ analysis.

In Lincoln County, West Virginia, Gary Vance owns 21 acres atop a steep ridge that has no internet connection. Vance, who sat in his yard enjoying the sun on a recent day, said he doesn’t want to wait any longer.

Vance said he has various medical conditions: high blood sugar, deteriorating bones, lung problems — “all kinds of crap.” He’s worried about his family’s inability to make a phone call or connect to the internet.

“You can’t call nobody to get out if something happens,” said Vance, who also lacks running water.

KFF Health News, using data from federal and academic sources, found more than 200 counties — with large swaths in the South, Appalachia, and the remote West — lack high-speed internet, behavioral health providers, and primary care doctors who serve low-income patients on Medicaid. On average, residents in those counties experienced higher rates of diabetes, obesity, chronically high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease.

The gaps in telephone and internet services didn’t cause the higher rates of illness, but Ali said it does not help either.

Ali, who traveled rural America for his book “Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity,” said telehealth, education, banking, and the use of artificial intelligence all require fast download and upload speeds that cannot always be guaranteed with satellite or wireless technology.

It’s “the politics of good enough,” Ali said. “And that is always how we’ve treated rural America.”

Fiber-optic cables, installed underground or on poles, consistently provide broadband speeds that meet the Federal Communications Commission’s requirements for broadband download speed of 100 megabits per second and 20 Mbps upload speed. By contrast, a national speed analysis, performed by Ookla, a private research and analytics company, found that only 17.4% of Starlink satellite internet users nationwide consistently get those minimum speeds. The report also noted Starlink’s speeds were rising nationwide in the first three months of 2025.

In March, West Virginia’s Republican governor, Patrick Morrisey, announced plans to collaborate with the Trump administration on the new requirements.

Republican state Del. Dan Linville, who has been working with Morrisey’s office, said his goal is to eventually get fiber everywhere but said other opportunities could be available to get internet faster.

<Maybe I’ve had this all wrong, my friends …

Maybe if, instead of wondering if our country will survive the next three-plus years, this question should be asked instead: Will the grotesque and failing Donald Trump survive that long?

Here’s where I dutifully remind everybody, after first reminding myself, that it has been only 147 days since this repellent, racist degenerate placed his right hand in the vicinity of a Bible and was sworn in a second time, to finish off what he started in 2017.

147 DAYS.

My God, entire decades have felt shorter.

Trump has surrounded himself with a cabinet that is right out of the bowels of Rupert Murdoch after an all-you-can-eat offering of chicken-salmonella on the barbie.

Hegseth, Noem, Kennedy, Loeffler, Bondi, McMahon, Gabbard, Duffy …

Every single one of these clowns got their jobs, not because of any stellar qualifications or abiding allegiance to our country, but because of their appalling capacity to bow over and over again to their huffing and puffing ringmaster.

So while they have been bringing back measles, making air travel a literal death-defying high-flying act, texting top-secret information to our enemies, and defending the indefensible in court, their dear leader has been shuffling his fat little feet and backing himself into a corner.

He thought it would be easier to knock Americans into submission, and after watching us collectively punch ourselves in the face for the second time in eight years in November, I almost can’t blame him. It takes a lot of unmitigated gall to vote for a racist, America-attacking convicted felon who hasn’t told the truth since his parents locked him in a military school because they couldn’t stand the sight of him.

No country has done more truly wonderful things — “we must take that beach no matter what!” — and truly horrible things — “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” — than the United States of America.

Except, having successfully cornered himself, the ignorant fascist is finding out in record time that his options are actually limited.

I’ve repeatedly warned since the first days of this mess of a presidency that it was only a matter of time before Trump used our military for him and against us, but I have to admit I am surprised how quickly he played this toxic card.

Trump was dealt a precarious hand by an unbalanced American electorate that needed to be finessed, but decided to play it like he held a mandate. He got sloppy because we are finding out he’s old and tired, and wants nothing to do with the job.

He knows he’s losing, and now must publicly carry out his four-year sentence.

He’s losing in the court of public opinion where his negative approvals have already shattered records.

He’s losing on the economy, which was somehow a strong point for him. (And this historic misnomer really needs to be addressed because Republican administrations are provably horrible for the economy, yet grade out better than Democrats who restore them.)

He’s losing on immigration, because most Americans don’t like seeing families senselessly ripped apart like some 1930s Nazi Germany redo.

He’s losing independent voters in droves because there is finally an understanding that his “Big Beautiful Bill” will pad billionaires’ pockets while hurting millions in his cult, who might snap out of their trance when they can no longer afford the things that cure what ails them.

He’s losing everywhere, because damn if he isn’t being absolutely annihilated and mocked by anybody who isn’t a full-throated fascist on the world stage.

He harrumphed out of the G7 meetings because he can no longer even pretend to be a valuable contributor. He needs his naps, and a regular diaper change.

He is using a putty knife these days to cake on the brownish-orange mud to his hideous gray-white face in an effort to become a more distinctive person of color....>

<....There’s a real irony there that I’ll point out with both index fingers, while letting my middle ones signal my absolute contempt for this vulgar, America-attacking loser.

Following one of the most consequential weeks in America history, which saw Trump host a MAGA rally on a U.S. Army base and grift off our soldiers; No Kings rallies that were attended by millions of Americans in literally every corner of our country; when two lawmakers and their families were brutally attacked in their homes by a member of Trump’s cult; and a military parade to celebrate his birthday was somehow even more pathetic and sad than most of us thought it would be … Trump is on the losing end of a poorly played hand, and I promise you is looking for an opportunity to cash out.

He’s 79 going on 100, is hated by most of the world, and now must spend what little time he has left on Earth trapped in a tiny, miserable world of his making.

That’s quite a legacy.

I’m not completely counting him out yet, because of his unique capacity to hate. It’s all he has left. Everything he continues to do will be for him first and America second — if it at all.

In that regard, he’s never been more dangerous.

While I’ve admittedly had my doubts about what, if anything, would drive Americans into the streets to rise up against this madman, they have mostly been extinguished following Saturday’s marches.

I am more confident as I type this piece today than I was on Friday night that Americans are capable of meeting this moment. I am more confident than ever that people, not parties, will save our democracy.

We have seen this before in this tumultuous country when truly heroic people sacrificed life and limb on the battlefields, and fought with all their hearts in our streets and in our courts in the never-ending quest for equal rights.

The battle has once again been joined.

We are but 147 days into a hateful regime that is scheduled to go 1,461. We are roughly a tenth of the way towards its bitter end.

There is no way the low-energy, miserable Trump makes it.

NO.

WAY.

I say we pour it on, and finish him off.>

<Kilmar Abrego Garcia – the man mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison then brought back to the US only to face a criminal human smuggling indictment – has been held out by the Trump administration as an example of the danger of having undocumented immigrants in the US.

Yet amid the political, diplomatic and court standoff, parts of the Justice Department’s criminal case against Abrego Garcia appears to be so tenuous that a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee strongly questioned whether keeping him locked up pending trial is merited.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to transporting other undocumented people from Texas to Maryland in an SUV in 2022 and taking part in a smuggling conspiracy.

During a six-hour hearing last week, prosecutors road tested their portrait of a crime-ring-connected, cold-blooded man who state troopers stumbled upon in a 2022 traffic stop. They presented evidence and witness testimony from a Homeland Security special agent, but the defense team was able to raise major doubts regarding its accuracy and authenticity with the judge.

Acting US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Robert McGuire argued that Abrego Garcia may be a danger to the community because a 15-year-old minor allegedly in the SUV might not have been wearing a seatbelt when being driven from Texas to Maryland. The prosecutor also pointed to years old complaints of domestic violence by Abrego Garcia’s wife.

“The federal government wants to make a statement, that it is serious about immigration violations and also wants to overcome the embarrassment associated with shipping (Abrego Garcia) out of the country and having to bring him back,” said Chris Slobogin, a criminal justice law professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Prosecutors have also asserted that Abrego Garcia could flee while awaiting a trial, citing his notoriety, which came about after he was deported in March.

Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes called that an “academic discussion” at the hearing, because Abrego Garcia is likely to remain in immigration custody for the foreseeable future no matter what happens in the criminal case.

The direct questioning and cross-examination in the hearing, however, gave Abrego Garcia’s defense team and the judge plenty of opportunities to raise doubts about how solid the evidence against him may be.

“A grand jury did indict based on evidence, but it seems the defense has identified some potentially productive grounds for cross-examination,” said CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.

The evidence included a video of the traffic stop and police body camera footage from when Abrego Garcia was pulled over in November 2022 for speeding on an interstate in an SUV. Nine other men, without identification or luggage, were in the vehicle.

No charges were brought for years after the traffic stop – not until Abrego Garcia had become a political football in the Trump administration’s use of a prison for terrorists in El Salvador to take undocumented immigrants apprehended in the US. Since then, federal authorities have gathered additional evidence from the state troopers and others, and even now say they continue to investigate.

Information from investigators showed the SUV Abrego Garcia had driven belonged to a person previously convicted of smuggling, and that it was unlikely he was coming from St. Louis when stopped, which is what he told troopers.

Here’s the other key evidence in the case:

List of names and birthdays of people in the SUV

The troopers had asked the passengers in the vehicle to each write down their names, their dates of birth and potentially their residences.

The prosecutor called this “functionally the roster of passengers as they wrote themselves.” One of the passengers self-identified his birthday as being in 2007, making him 15 at the time of the traffic stop.

Both Holmes and the defense questioned the validity of that date, and others. Undocumented immigrants in the US may not be willing to disclose their true names and birth dates when asked by law enforcement in a traffic stop, defense Attorney William Allensworth argued.

Allensworth also told the judge that undocumented adults in the US may be motivated to say they are underage, given the protections given under deferred action policies for children brought to the US illegally. Holmes also noted there was no other evidence in court that signaled the alleged 15-year-old looked young, like a child.

“The defense has suggested maybe (the alleged 15-year old) was lying about his age for reasons known only to God,” McGuire responded. “If the 15-year-old logically was the last person to receive a piece of paper to write his name on it, he would be sitting in the back. Your honor, there would not be seatbelts.”....>

<....But the judge pressed him: “What evidence do I have of that?”

“It’s walking-around sense,” McGuire said.

“I would bet everybody in this courthouse an ice cold beer that there were not seatbelts in that back row,” he added.

Investigators also say one state trooper at the traffic stop said he took photographs of passports some of the men had, with no stamps from US ports of entry in them. But Peter Joseph, the special agent who testified Friday, said the federal investigators could not find and do not have those photographs.

Use of cooperating witnesses

The credentials of the people providing information about Abrego Garcia aren’t unimpeachable – and in this investigation, they’re seizing upon an opportunity to provide information that could help them immensely in their own legal issues, defense attorneys pointed out.

One cooperator, the court proceedings confirmed, is a two-time felon who had been deported from the US five times, only to return illegally, yet is now attempting to stay in the US and get work authorization. That cooperator is currently finishing a criminal sentence in a halfway house.

Another cooperator has admitted to human trafficking and already been deported once, yet now is in custody and criminally charged after reentering the US.

The two male cooperators are close relatives. A female cooperator, also seeking leniency in her own immigration proceedings, was in a relationship with one of those men.

Some of the cooperating witnesses’ risk of deportation and conviction appeared to be much more severe than Abrego Garcia’s, his defense attorneys argued, an insinuation that they may be more motivated to lie to help the DOJ’s case.

Abrego Garcia’s defense also incisively questioned what the cooperators told investigators.

The two male cooperators alleged that Abrego Garcia was making the drive from Texas to Maryland multiple times a week. Sometimes, his wife and children were with him, with the kids potentially sitting on the floorboards.

“You ever been on a road trip with your children?” Allensworth, the public defender, asked Joseph.

“They get a little antsy,” the special agent responded.

“You ever did (24 hours) … and made them sit on the floor when they’re in a packed van with other men?” Allensworth asked. According to the cooperators, in one week, “after 144 hours on the road, he’d finally stop driving with his children sitting on the floorboards.”

Several times during the hearing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys objected to the use of hearsay – or even multiple tiers of hearsay, they said – as evidence in court. Examples of this during the hearing included when the federal agent, on the witness stand, told the judge he had heard that a cooperator had heard from another person Abrego Garcia may have sexually harassed women.

The allegation of Abrego Garcia being linked to MS-13 had similarly come to federal authorities through a chain of sources, the hearing revealed.

The danger allegation

At one point in the hearing, McGuire tried to point, as validity of the dangerousness of human smuggling, to a wreck in Mexico during an operation that killed many people.

The judge clarified from the bench that Abrego Garcia wasn’t involved in that incident.

“It is of marginal relevance of what may have happened in some other kind of similar organization of which Mr. Abrego Garcia may be a part,” she said.

Some legal experts, such as Honig, say that Abrego Garcia’s smuggling case itself is the type that wouldn’t have gotten much notice at all, let alone a televised press conference from Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing the indictment.

“Bondi stood behind that podium, flanked by her top Justice Department lieutenants, and yelled into the mic for one reason: politics,” Honig wrote in a recent New York Magazine article.

Indeed, both Bondi and McGuire have emphasized how dangerous they believe men like Abrego Garcia may be, and their interest in keeping them off the streets.

“There were children involved in that, you know, human trafficking, not only in our country but in our world is very, very real. It’s very dangerous,” Bondi said at the press conference announcing the indictment.

She then noted how, in unrelated cases, MS-13 may bring children to the US to groom them to become gang members.

“My job is to try to protect this community,” McGuire said at the court hearing. When pressed by the judge repeatedly, though, on whether he had evidence to show in recent months that Abrego Garcia may be dangerous, he responded that he was relying more on his common sense, a lack of evidence showing the opposite, and his belief.>

<Four and one-half years after losing to Joe Biden — and five months into his second presidency — Donald Trump is calling for a special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), now headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate the 2020 election. Some hardcore MAGA conspiracy theorists are applauding the proposal, yet many others on the both the left and the right are lambasting Trump for clinging to a conspiracy theory that was repeatedly debunked during the final months of his first presidency.

One of those critics is Steve Benen, an MSNBC columnist known for producing "The Rachel Maddow Show." In his June 20 column, Benen lays out some reasons why Trump himself could be hurt by his push for a 2020 election probe at DOJ in 2025.

In a June 20 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "Zero Border crossings for the month for TRUMP, verses 60,000 for Sleepy, Crooked Joe Biden, a man who lost the 2020 Presidential Election by a 'LANDSLIDE!' Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin! What this Crooked man, and his CORRUPT CRONIES, have done to our Country in 4 years, is grossly indescribable! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

But according to Benen, Trump won't be doing himself any favor if Bondi-era DOJ moves forward with Trump's proposal.

"Look, there's little value in me writing a few hundred words to explain that Trump lost fair square and the 'overwhelming' evidence doesn’t exist," Benen argues. "Let's just stipulate that all fair-minded observers already know this. Instead, I'm going to note that Trump should be careful what he wishes for…. I mention this because Trump has already initiated investigations into his 2020 defeat."

Benen continues, "These investigators were motivated to tell their client exactly what he wanted to hear, but they simply couldn't provide Trump with proof that didn't exist. The same is true of state-based audits, which confirmed that the actual election results from that race were accurate. Now, the president is effectively saying that yet another investigation is necessary, since the original investigations, including the ones he paid for, were apparently too reality-based for him. What's more, the Justice Department is in the hands of shameless Trump loyalists who might very well find some far-right partisan willing to take on the duties of a special counsel."

Benen's column and Trump's special counsel proposal are receiving a lot of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

Ohio-based Democrat Rick Taylor tweeted, "Now Trump is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election Watch as they make false allegations and rewrite history right in front of our faces AND NOT ONE PERSON IN POWER WILL DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT IT Just like he changed the narratives for 2016 and 1/6."

X User Pete Masalsky lamented, "The sad thing is that he has his idiot flunkies everywhere and you know they're going to appoint a MAGA special prosecutor."

Attorney Paul Feinstein posted, "Didn't he claim in his criminal cases that special prosecutors weren't legal?"

X user Stefan Bethlenfalvay posted, "As Trump floats special prosecutor on 2020, he should be careful what he wishes for. 'The president has already initiated investigations into his failed 2020 candidacy. Now he wants a special counsel to tell him what he wants to hear.'"

Another X user, Charlotte Curtis, wrote, "He can lie all he wants but he can't change what we saw on January 6th, a traitorous act that he should have been imprisoned for immediately.">

<With respect to the GOP’s budget bill – the one they habitually call big and beautiful – there are a few things worth bearing in mind, because they are always true when it comes to the Republicans and money.

・They always say tax cuts pay for themselves. They don’t.

・They always say they care about debt and deficits. They don’t.

・They always say they care about budgets in general. They don’t.

・They always say they are cutting taxes for everyone. Not really.

Again these are always true. These are the baseline of all discussion of budgets and taxation under Republican administrations. And because these are always true, the real story is how the Republicans are going to rationalize doing what they want to do without revealing the truth.

But there’s more going on than merely lying in order for the very obscenely rich to get away without paying their fair share.

The Republicans are going to steal.

This is not an exaggeration. The Republicans are going to take money from you – in the form of cash and benefits – and give it to someone who did not truly earn that money, and who is not truly deserving of it, since they already have as much as any human being will ever need.

If the Democrats were in charge, and they wanted to take some money from the rich and give it to people for groceries (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps), we know what the Republicans would call it.

Welfare.

But that word is missing this time, because “welfare” is never applied to the very obscenely rich. It’s is only applied to the “undeserving,” which is to say, nonwhite people, who are the subject of bigotry by white people, which is why those same white people never believe they are on welfare even when they are on welfare, and why they never believe the Republicans would ever take their welfare away. That “wouldn’t make sense,” because they are deserving, after all.

When put like this, it should be clear that so much of the discussion about the Republican budget bill is not about money at all, which is why they can get away with this dog-and-pony show. And that’s why it’s so important to bear the above truths in mind. They don’t have any higher-order principles, unless they include greed and power-lust, so the real story is what the Republicans will say to cover all that up.

When the Democrats help people, the Republicans call it welfare.

When the Republicans help the rich, they call it a tax cut.

In reality, it’s theft, up and down.

If either the Senate version or the House version of the GOP’s budget bill becomes law, it will be “the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history,” according to Bobby Kogan. “Either bill would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either bill would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either bill would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest.”

Bobby is the senior director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Theft” isn’t his word. It’s mine. But that’s what I think he’s describing. The Republicans are trying to reshape our society so that those with the least get the least and those with the most get the most. And they are going to do that by doing what they accuse the Democrats of doing: giving welfare to the undeserving.

The CBO released its assessment of the Republicans' budget bill. If passed, it would add trillions to the debt through tax cuts mostly to the very obscenely rich. Can we just say for everyone that they don't really care about the debt or even the concept of budgeting?

What must be true is that Congressional Republicans supporting this bill care more about tax cuts than they do about deficits. They might care about deficits in the abstract, but when push comes to shove, and they’re faced with a choice between enacting tax cuts or having lower deficits, they choose tax cuts time and again.

Regarding your question about the concept of budgeting, what the Senate is looking at doing is so extreme it would be the end of what little was left of budget enforcement. They’re asserting they have the power to invent their own cost estimates on the spot via section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act. If you just get to make up your own numbers, we may as well repeal the entire Congressional Budget Act.

That would be in keeping with their long history of makebelieve. They have been asserting for decades that tax cuts drive revenues when they don't. The rich keep their money. Yet this lie never dies....>

<....Even George HW Bush called it "voodoo economics". The truth is that every single even remotely credible group that looked at it said the tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Even the House Republicans’ insane growth estimates still don’t think it’ll pay for itself. They gave themselves a dynamic score of $2.6 trillion, a total joke. But even that doesn’t get you close to paying for itself. They’re such debt warrior cosplayers they’re stuck pretending their stuff pays for itself. It would be more honest to just say “hey, I lowered taxes because we wanted to.” That’s what George W. Bush did. He said he was giving a tax cut to get rid of the surplus. But these folks just lie. They lie about what their tax cuts are doing. They lie about what their Medicaid cuts are doing.

As I was reading the AP report on the CBO’s analysis, I thought to myself: I have been paying about the same amount of taxes on my income for years. Despite all the tax cuts over that time, my tax bill hasn't budged much. What does this one do for normal people, which is to say, households that earn less than, I dunno, 150 grand a year?

If you give me a few minutes and you’d like, I can crunch the numbers.

Take your time.

OK, it’s about $1325 on average for households making under 200,000, and about $725 on average for households making under $100,000

So the Republican use of the word "massive" doesn't apply.

Massive tax cuts for typical Americans? No. These are massive tax cuts if you’re rich. These are $14 a week if you’re making under $100,000.. And once you take into account tariffs, many, many people are worse off. And when you take into account Medicaid and SNAP cuts, the poorest Americans are significantly worse off, while the richest Americans are significantly better off.

Hold on a sec: The very richest are going to save on average $300,000? I'm sorry but that doesn't seem like a lot when you're bringing home tens of millions, hundreds of millions. I guess my question is about psychology. What's the point of this exercise?

The largest cuts to the richest American came in the first round of the Trump tax cuts – and those were made permanent. The large corporate tax cuts were made permanent, while the provisions that affect individuals were made temporary. And it was those corporate tax cuts that really benefited the very, very richest Americans.

So this is $300,000 on top of that.

But I would also say that, even adjusting for income size, the richest Americans still get the largest boost to their after-tax income than regular Americans.

It used to be seen as responsible statecraft to raise revenues in order to balance budgets. The last president to achieve that was Clinton. The last Republican president to raise taxes was GHW Bush. Today, no one talks about responsible budgeting, not even the Democrats. This can't go on, right?

I think we have a problem of Republican presidents beginning temporary tax cuts and Democratic presidents being unwilling to let most of them expire. And that leads us to a significant revenue hole.

But I would say that both Obama and Biden raised taxes, on net, for the richest Americans. But yes, our fiscal trajectory is not good, and it’s a product of expensive tax cuts that disproportionately went to the rich.

In the House-passed bill, on average, the bottom 30 percent of the country end up poorer. When you take into account the effect of Trump’s tariffs, the bottom 80 percent end up poorer.

Their proposal would quite literally make those struggling to get by worse off while making the richest Americans richer. It isn’t some shared sacrifice where everyone has to tighten their belts to work on the deficit. Instead, it’s making working-class people tighten their belts so the richest can loosen theirs.

One other thing: now that we’ve seen both the Senate and House versions, we can safely say that either, if enacted, would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history. Either would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest.

Either would dramatically harm the poor while helping the rich.>

<Then-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was 32 when, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she voted in 1974 for three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. She spent the next few years as part of a Congress that passed wave after wave of laws to rein in future presidents.

A half-century later, Holtzman, a New York Democrat, is watching as President Donald Trump takes aim at post-Watergate reforms on transparency, spending, conflicts of interest and more. By challenging and disregarding, in letter or in spirit, this slew of 1970s laws, Trump is essentially closing the 50-year post-Watergate chapter of American history — and ushering in a new era of shaky guardrails and blurred separation of powers.

“We didn’t envision this,” Holtzman said. “We saw Nixon doing it, but he hadn’t done it on this vast a scale. Trump is saying, ‘Congress cannot tell me what to do about anything.’”

In 1976, for example, Congress created a 10-year term for FBI directors; Trump has forced out two FBI directors. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 aimed to prevent presidents from dismantling agencies; Trump has essentially done just that. Lawmakers in 1978 installed independent inspectors general in government offices; Trump has fired many of them and is seeking to replace them with loyalists.

Trump has also disregarded post-Watergate safeguards intended to prevent the unjustified firings of federal workers. His U.S. DOGE Service has skirted rules on government secrecy and personal data. He has declared numerous emergencies despite Congress’s efforts to rein them in.

This broad rejection of the post-Watergate laws underlines the country’s shift from an era focused on clean government and strict ethics to the rise of a president whose appeal stems in part from his willingness to violate such rules and constraints.

“There has been a collapse, at least temporarily, of the kind of outrage and ethical standards that were prevalent during the days of Watergate,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, who headed the special counsel’s Watergate Task Force. “The excesses of Watergate now seem naive. They have been overtaken by a system that is based on quid pro quo.”

Many of Trump’s moves face legal challenges, and they may be reversed by the courts — or the Supreme Court could enshrine them. Some scholars welcome Trump’s effort to claw back presidential power, saying the post-Watergate Congresses, caught up in an anti-Nixon fervor, improperly sought to rewrite the Constitution in the legislative branch’s favor.

“Congress should not be able to fundamentally change the constitutional balance between the two branches,” said John Yoo, a senior Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, referring to the legislative and executive. “Several of the Watergate reforms went too far. The presidency functioned better, and the separation of powers functioned better, before.”

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Trump is not dismantling ethics but reviving them in a system that had become corrupted.

“President Trump is restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch following four years of relentless abuse through weaponization, lawfare, and unelected bureaucrats running the nation via autopen,” Harrison said in a statement. “The President and his administration are the most transparent in American history, seamlessly executing the will of the American people in accordance with their constitutional authority.”

Nixon’s resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, was a seismic political event, as Americans at the time were far less hardened to scandal and more willing to denounce wrongdoing by their party’s leaders. In November of that year, Democrats swept to historic majorities in Congress, carried on a wave of pro-reform sentiment.

They crafted restraints on presidential authority that had not occurred to anyone before Nixon’s startling use of government power against his adversaries. Nixon’s team had broken into Democratic headquarters, spied on domestic targets, secretly taped White House visitors, misused campaign funds and even developed an “enemies list” with a plan to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies,” as White House counsel John Dean put it.

Presidents of both parties have chafed at those restrictions but largely followed them. Until now.

Some Democrats say Trump, by disregarding many of the statutes, is going further than Nixon, who at least paid lip service to his obligation to follow the law.

“Nixon was essentially a criminal, but an ordinary criminal who accepted the fact that the laws applied to him and that if he tried to violate them he would be subject to punishment,” said David Dorsen, an assistant chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee. “Trump considers himself above the law, so that the system is to be rejected by him when he feels like it should be.”...>

Save one:

<....It is far from clear that Trump is seeking to eviscerate the Watergate laws specifically. He has always taken an expansive view of his own power, and that has set up a natural collision with the rules written by lawmakers trying to rein in what they saw as rogue presidents.

That collision is unfolding on numerous fronts. Watergate-era lawmakers, furious at Nixon for refusing to spend money they had authorized, passed a law forbidding “impoundment.” Trump ignored that when he temporarily froze government grants, and he has all but dismantled an agency created by Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In response to Nixon’s push to replace civil servants with political loyalists, Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1978 to hear cases of federal employees claiming unjust termination. Trump, who wants to force out thousands of workers, has dismissed a key member of the board and sought to neutralize it.

Among the most notable post-Watergate reforms was the creation in 1978 of inspector general offices to pursue wrongdoing throughout the government. The law has been bolstered repeatedly since then and number of IGs has expanded to more than 70, with some Republican lawmakers among their strongest supporters.

Trump fired 16 inspectors general shortly after taking office, in apparent violation of the law that requires 30 days’ notice and a detailed rationale for such dismissals. Previous presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have also sought to fire IGs, but not in such a sweeping, peremptory manner.

For many of Trump’s critics, his rejection of the post-Watergate worldview goes beyond individual laws to a broader disregard of the principle that a president should not use the federal government to advance his personal interests.

When Trump dines with people who enriched his family by buying his meme coin, or rewards his top campaign donor with a powerful federal job, they say, he is obliterating the red line drawn after Watergate.

“The background was a president who, on every front that you looked, was engaged in an abuse of power,” Holtzman said of the Watergate reforms. But now, she added, “You have Elon Musk, who can spend almost $300 million to elect a president — when we passed a law specifically to limit expenditures because of the abuses we saw in Watergate.”

The courts are weighing almost all of Trump’s moves; he has won some victories, and legal experts say it is likely the Supreme Court will approve at least some of what he is doing. The judiciary has become far more supportive of presidential power in the years since Watergate.

Yoo said it is notable that Trump is insisting on his right to fire any executive branch employee, including those Congress sought to shield with specified terms. “If he succeeds in that, it would end the Watergate experiment in creating these independent bureaucracies,” said Yoo, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.

“On issue after issue, he has either taken these Watergate laws and interpreted them way beyond what the Congress originally wanted or just directly challenged their constitutionality, and you’re seeing them go up to the Supreme Court right now,” Yoo said.

Still, it was clear long before Trump that some of the most far-reaching Watergate reforms were floundering. The courts struck down several campaign finance rules, for example, saying they violated the First Amendment....>

<....In 1999, Congress chose not to renew its independent counsel law, which was a response to Nixon’s notorious “Saturday Night Massacre.” After Nixon fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox — along with Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy — Congress decreed that a three-judge panel would appoint such prosecutors in the future.

But the system proved unwieldy. The Clinton administration alone faced seven independent counsel probes, many lasting for years or focused on minor allegations. By 1999, lawmakers of both parties were happy to let the statute expire and return to a system of special counsels appointed by the attorney general.

The political culture has clearly shifted in dramatic ways since the late 1970s. Holtzman said her colleagues had hoped the threat of impeachment, which ultimately forced Nixon to resign, would deter future presidents if the new laws did not.

Since then, President Bill Clinton was impeached once and Trump twice. But all three Senate trials resulted in acquittal largely along party lines. And Trump’s impeachment did not prevent him from retaking the White House in decisive fashion last year.

“Naively, we thought the impeachment itself would stand as a warning to future presidents, and it hasn’t,” Holtzman said.

Rufus Edmisten, who was a deputy chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, said Congress’s willingness to assert itself in a bipartisan way has all but evaporated since the hot day in the summer of 1973 when he delivered a congressional subpoena to a sitting president.

“We’re right back to another Watergate, except worse,” Edmisten said. “Having been in the middle of all kinds of things for 10 years, especially Watergate, I cringe when I think how Congress has become a lapdog. It’s taken a back seat in the separation of powers order of things. It’s almost an afterthought.”>

<The last thing I thought before I fell asleep last night was, “We are at war.” The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was, “We are at war.” I didn’t distance myself from it because there are some acts nations take for which we all will bear the burden of collective responsibility no matter how vehemently individual citizens might disagree with them.

As a country, we are at war and the man who led us into this war is a corrupt, degraded, ignorant know-nothing who acted illegally to plunge us into a potentially catastrophic situation without the consent of Congress because, despite the fact that he is president of the United States of America and arguably the most recognized figure on the planet, he wasn’t getting enough attention.

It is long past time that we stop imputing some deeper or reasonable motives to Donald Trump. Despite being depraved and cruel, much like his cohort Benjamin Netanyahu, he is driven by the most primitive impulses that center almost solely around protecting his fragile ego from humiliation (about which he has a pathological terror) and himself from the reality that he is a complete fraud.

Donald is still no doubt stinging from the acronym recently coined to mock his inability to follow through on anything—TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. In the wake of Israeli strikes against Iran, Donald spent a few days saber-rattling only to back off (chicken out, if you will) in the wake of searing criticism by some of the most reliably sycophantic members of his cult—e.g. Rep. Marjorie Green (R-GA), Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon). He announced at a bizarre press conference that his decision to address the ostensibly urgent crisis regarding Iran would be put off for two weeks.

Only two days later, he ordered the attack on Iran. His allies would have us believe that Donald, a brilliant strategist, was faking us out. Sure. An infinitely more plausible explanation is that, on the one hand, he hates being challenged or contradicted, especially from those who almost always fall in line; therefore, he felt the need to double-down on his threats by carrying them out. On the other hand, Donald is a desperate black hole of need—by changing the narrative, he could make sure the spotlight turned back on him.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Donald wrote this on his failing social media site:

We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter?” It’s worth reminding ourselves that the United States is currently in thrall to an insane person. Also, you do not engage in unilateral, unprovoked bombings of another country, declare victory, and then just walk away. J.D. Vance can claim as much as he wants that the United States is “at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” but I’m fairly certain Iranians won’t see it that way.....>

<....In another post, Donald wrote:

This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR.” That’s not how it works. Israel and America are the aggressors here. In his remarks, Abbas Araghchi, foreign minister of Iran, remarked that Donald has “betrayed Iran” and “betrayed diplomacy” while the two countries were in the midst of negotiations as well as deceiving “his own voters” after promising to stay out of foreign wars. He also said that Iran would respond in the name of “self-defense.

This does not bode well for the thousands of American troops in the Middle East who are in close proximity to Iran, many of whom are within minutes of a potential missile strike.

By defying very clear international law in order to bomb Iran, Donald has put this country on the wrong side of this issue. I am not at all an expert in these matters, but I doubt Iran will choose to engage in an all-out war with the United States. At the moment, it is a considerably weakened nation and its allies, the other so-called “axis of resistance states” which include Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen, are much weaker now than they were eighteen months ago. But there are other potential dangers to our having engaged in this conflict—again, without our having faced an immediate threat from the country we attacked: for example, our vulnerability to terrorist attacks has increased exponentially.

In a press conference announcing the strikes, Donald claimed that Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated” by American strikes, but that is far from clear. During a joint press conference this morning, neither Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nor Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could make that determination. In other words, Iran may continue to have the ability to produce nuclear weapons.

When you consider that Fordow, one of the three nuclear sites targeted, was built inside a mountain and that, according to The New York Times, experts have determined “the enrichment facilities were impervious to all but a repeated assault from American ‘bunker buster’ bombs,” it is highly unlikely Iran’s program has been “obliterated.”

As to the degree to which Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons was imminent, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote on social media, “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.” Murphy says he was briefed last week by our own intelligence agencies and, according to them, “Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States.” Donald disagreed, claiming that our intelligence is “wrong.” After Tulsi Gabbard, his own Director of National Intelligence, testified to Congress that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Donald’s response was, “I don’t care what she said.”...>

<....As for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it’s worth remembering that during Barack Obama’s second term, the United States—along with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia, and China—came up with and implemented a solution. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran Nuclear Deal, this “blocked every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring . . . through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparency regime -- that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.” By signing on to this agreement, Iran "significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes.”

Despite his professed concerns about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Donald unilaterally pulled the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018. Despite his professed concerns about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Netanyahu objected to the deal from the start in large part because it removed one of his clearest excuses to attack Iran. Keep in mind, Netanyahu has been saying for years that Iran’s having nuclear capability was imminent.

At last night’s press conference, Donald made yet more threats:

There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left…if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.

This isn’t over—not by a long-shot. The president of the United State authorized an unprovoked military strike without Congressional authorization in an egregious violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers.

There are four potential outcomes here that are not mutually exclusive: the political rehabilitation of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu; attacks on American soldiers in close proximity to Iran; terrorist attacks on American soil; and increased executive power as the Republican Congress cedes yet more of its Constitutional authority to Donald f***ing Trump.>

<A provision in the Senate budget bill would allow for millions of dollars to go directly toward President Donald Trump and the administration's ability to lay off federal workers without the consent of Congress.

It is a move that Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress, called "deeply, deeply concerning."

The provision, written by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, would give $100 million to the Office of Budget Management (OMB), according to Government Executive. The office is run by Project 2025 author Russ Vought, a proponent of mass government layoffs, which are a central tenet of Project 2025.

Olinsky referenced the lawsuits by federal employees fired by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts, telling Newsweek: "[This bill is] exactly the kind of thing that the president has been trying to do, I would say, illegally, as he seeks to shut down departments or agencies, or limit [agencies] to a handful of staff down from 1000s and do large mass layoffs and other kinds of cuts to entire functions or programs."

Those in favor of the bill have said: "Any president should have the ability to clear the waste he or she has identified without obstruction."

Newsweek contacted Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, via email for comment.

Many of the people affected by mass federal layoffs initiated by DOGE at the start of Trump's second term are now in court as they were made without congressional approval. The provision would allow for federal employees to be fired with little to no legal recourse.

Olinsky told Newsweek that it would lead to current and future distrust in the government by federal workers. Federal work used to be a lesser paid but significantly more stable line of work. If the provision passes, federal work will be seen as a much less realistic plan for long-term employment and will result in bright and capable Americans choosing to work in the private sector.

The provision of the bill, which is the Senate's version of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" passed by the House, appears in a section about government spending and reorganization by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

It would revitalize a provision last used in 1984 that allows the president to reorganize the federal government. However, Olinsky explained to Newsweek that it differs from the 1984 provision in one significant way.

"Those previous reorganization authorities that were granted to the president still had a role for Congress," he said.

Congress then had a certain amount of time to either approve or disapprove of the plan, and that determined whether the president's plan could go into effect.

"In the current reorganization language, it says that most of the statute that's currently on the books, or that was on the books through 1984, will not apply," Olinsky said. "And it basically says the president can put together a reorganization plan, and as long as it's making government smaller, it is deemed approved.

"So, there would be no further review by Congress, no further action. It would simply be automatic. It is approved by this language without [Congress] having seen it first. That is dramatically concerning to me."

Olinsky added: "The executive actions that the Trump administration has been taking are absolutely taking Project 2025, the most extreme parts of it, and putting them into effect. And, actually going much further in many cases."....>

<....Project 2025 says that the president should be able to "discharge...nonperforming employees." It speaks in broad terms about federal employees, whom its authors see as part of the "federal bureaucracy."

"Federal employees are often ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people, but with one another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government "of, by, and for" the people," Project 2025 says.

Olinsky said that people fired as a result of DOGE cuts could continue their suits in court, but anyone fired under the new provision would not have a case against the government. He said the only means of legal recourse for fired employees would be if mass firings reduced the government's ability to monitor enforcement functions.

For example, if the White House fired every member of an agency that oversaw labor standards, someone could potentially sue and say their firing undermined government enforcement work.

Other critics of this move say it directly undermines Congress' ability to govern, as government spending is one of Congress' primary responsibilities.

Olinsky said there is a chance the Senate parliamentarian rules that the provision defies the Byrd Rule, which says that all reconciliation packages have to focus on budget issues and cannot stray into other parts of government. Olinsky believes the provision violates the Byrd Rule, but whether enough members of the Senate and/or the parliamentarian believe the same is "an open question," he said.

Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress, told Newsweek: "This [bill] would basically give [Trump] carte blanche to refashion the entire federal government in ways that he likes.

"Now, even under this language, it basically means you have to make the government smaller, not larger. But there's a lot of playing you could do to assist with [Trump's] priorities and stifle functions of government that he just doesn't like.

"This should be deeply, deeply concerning to anyone."

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: "This provision would reestablish the authority for a president to reorganize government as long as these plans do not result in an increase in federal agencies and the plan does not result in an increase in federal spending."

The House does not have a similar rule, so if the provision remains in the Senate version of the bill, it cannot be removed through a parliamentarian complaint to the Bird Rule by the House.>

<<Fusilli: I just wonder... what is this page about?>

(Mostly perverted thoughts, and...) An outlet for "The Rokers," a cyberbully and a troll master to run up their trash posting totals. One has posted 64,842 times from the same account, making a ridiculous run at becoming the top lame CGs poster as part of his "chess" legacy. Perv was not in the top 10 list of most CGs posts in 2021, but he's piled it on thick in recent years since no moderator bothers to muzzle him. The other endless tongue wagger has easily tripled or quadrupled that number from a multitude of free accounts over decades, often using those accounts to appear to be different members in a quorum of public opinion (the majority of a targeted disagreement), when in fact it is just one person stirring up trouble, attempting to deceive the public.

"Al" nor "Roxie" (that's one helluva coincidental play on namez if I do say so myself) Roker Chessgames - Guys and Dolls (kibitz #4115) are unlikely to give the weather report on these pages, so I wouldn't wait around for something useful, tastefully done.

This mostly harmless page of weeds is a good example of misapplied values, a lost sense of purpose. Chessgames should have eliminated this entirely unnecessary page of junk instead of expanding it to include Guys. The overall focus continues branching out away from chess, and the standards of expression continue to sink much lower than that of other chess-first websites....>

The 'lost sense of purpose' here, <fredzhopnik>, is your playing <stalker> to <zed> and myself.

Assuming that what you say is true of my not being in the top ten posters as of four years ago, you are very clearly obsessed with me for some reason. In bygone days, you could never get the better of me, and all these years on, nothing has changed. You remain the worthless twat and <zhopnik> that you always were.

<In a scathing letter from Democratic lawmakers, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was chastised for unlawfully obstructing members of Congress from visiting detention centers used to house undocumented immigrants, and was reminded of one of her more controversial moments in recent years.

Signed off by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Lou Correa (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the letter condemns Noem for new policies enacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcements, an agency under DHS, that unlawfully restrict members of Congress from visiting ICE facilities, a violation, they say, of Congress’ constitutional oversight duties over the executive branch.

In the letter, the lawmakers went on to compare ICE’s policies under Noem’s leadership, which they dubbed a “blatant violation of federal law,” with her treatment of Cricket, a female German wirehaired pointer. Once Noem’s pet, Noem admitted to killing the dog last year when it was 14 months old due to its “aggressive personality” that didn’t bode well for its intended purpose of hunting pheasant.

“The Constitution and laws of the United States are not unruly dogs that you can take out back, kick, and shoot when they no longer serve your purpose,” the letter reads.

“ICE has no valid reason to deny members of Congress access to its facilities, including the ICE field offices that hold people for multiple days. If your Department is doing no wrong, then you should welcome the representatives of the American people into ICE facilities.”

The lawmakers go on to condemn Noem for what they call a “string of increasingly flagrant abuses of power,” including ICE arrests and deportations without due process, the dismantling of oversight offices such as the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the arrest of New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander at a federal immigration court last week.

“We will continue to show up on behalf of the American people and our Constitution, and we will not be turned away,” the letter reads. “The American people are watching. Follow the law.”>

Choke on it, worthless cow!

<I’m told that the following message, which I received earlier today, purporting to be from Liz Cheney, is a hoax. She didn’t send it. It’s an excellent and important message nonetheless. (Several of you say it originated with Dr. Pru Lee.)

***

From Liz Cheney

Dear Democratic Party,

I need more from you.

You keep sending emails begging for $15,

while we’re watching fascism consolidate power in real time.

This administration is not simply “a different ideology.”

It is a coordinated, authoritarian machine — with the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the executive pen all under its control.

And you?

You’re still asking for decorum and donations. WT!.

That won’t save us.

I don’t want to hear another polite floor speech.

I want strategy.

I want fire.

I want action so bold it shifts the damn news cycle — not fits inside one.

Every time I see something from the DNC, it’s asking me for funds.

Surprise.

Those of us who donate don’t want to keep sending money just to watch you stand frozen as the Constitution goes up in flames — shaking your heads and saying,

“Well, there’s not much we can do. He has the majority.”

I call bulls***.

If you don’t know how to think outside the box…

If you don’t know how to strategize…

If you don’t know how to fight fire with fire…

what the hell are we giving you money for?

Some of us have two or three advanced degrees.

Some of us have military training.

Some of us know what coordinated resistance looks like — and this ain’t it.

Yes, the tours around the country? Nice.

The speeches? Nice.

The clever congressional clapbacks? Nice.

That was great for giving hope.

Now we need action.

You have to stop acting like this is a normal presidency that will just time out in four years.

We’re not even at Day 90, and look at the chaos.

Look at the disappearances.

Look at the erosion of the judiciary, the press, and our rights.

If you do not stop this, we will not make it 1,460 days.

So here’s what I need from you — right now:

⸻

1. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition.

I’m talking experts. Veterans. Whistleblowers. Journalists. Watchdog orgs.

Deputize the resistance. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse.

Make it public. Make it unshakable.

Let the people drag the rot into the light.

If you can’t hold formal hearings, hold public ones.

If Congress won’t act, let the country act.

This isn’t about optics — it’s about receipts.

Because at some point, these people will be held accountable.

And when that day comes, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented.

You’re not just preserving truth — you’re preparing evidence for prosecution.

The more they vanish people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.

⸻

2. Join the International Criminal Court.

Yes, I said it. Call their bluff.

You cannot control what the other side does.

But you can control your own integrity.

So prove it. Prove that your party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership.

Join.

If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.

Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts.

Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty.

And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into U.S. borders.

Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international oversight....>

<....3. Fund state-level resistance infrastructure.

Don’t just send postcards. Send resources.

Channel DNC funds into rapid-response teams, legal defense coalitions, sanctuary networks, and digital security training.

If the federal government is hijacked, build power underneath it.

If the laws become tools of oppression, help people resist them legally, locally, and boldly.

This is not campaign season — this is an authoritarian purge.

Stop campaigning.

Act like this is the end of democracy, because it is.

We WILL REMEMBER the warriors come primaries.

Fighting this regime should be your marketing strategy.

And let’s be clear:

The reason the other side always seems three steps ahead is because they ARE.

They prepared for this.

They infiltrated school boards, courts, local legislatures, and police unions.

They built a machine while you wrote press releases.

We’re reacting — they’ve been executing a plan for years.

It’s time to shift from panic to blueprint.

You should already be working with strategists and military minds on PROJECT 2029,

a coordinated, long-term plan to rebuild this country when the smoke clears.

You should be publicly laying out:

• The laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again

• The systems you’ll tear down and the safeguards you’ll enshrine

• The plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable

• The urgent commitment to immediately bring home those sold into slavery in El Salvador

You say you’re the party of the people?

Then show the people the plan.

⸻

4. Use your platform to educate the public on rights and resistance tactics.

If they’re going to strip us of rights and lie about it — arm the people with truth.

Text campaigns. Mass trainings. Downloadable “Know Your Rights” kits. Multilingual legal guides. Encrypted phone trees.

Give people tools, not soundbites.

We don’t need more slogans.

We need survival manuals.

⸻

5. Leverage international media and watchdogs.

Stop hoping U.S. cable news will wake up.

They’re too busy playing both sides of fascism.

Feed the real stories to BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters, Der Spiegel — hell, leak them to anonymous dropboxes if you have to.

Make what’s happening in America a global scandal.

And stop relying on platforms that are actively suppressing truth.

Start leveraging Substack. Use Bluesky.

That’s where the resistance is migrating. That’s where censorship hasn’t caught up.

If the mainstream won’t carry the truth — outflank them.

Get creative. Go underground. Go global.

If our democracy is being dismantled in broad daylight, make sure the whole world sees it — and make sure we’re still able to say it....>

<....6. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.

Not everyone inside this regime is loyal.

Some are scared. Some want out.

Build the channels.

Encrypted. Anonymous. Protected.

Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.

And while you’re at it?

Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors.

Everyone makes mistakes — even glaring, critical ones.

We are not the bullies.

We are not the ones filled with hate.

And it is not your job to shame people who finally saw the fire and chose to step out of it.

They will have to deal with that internal struggle — the guilt of putting a very dangerous and callous regime in power.

But they’re already outnumbered. Don’t push them back into the crowd.

We don’t need purity.

We need numbers.

We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.

⸻

7. Study the collapse — and the comeback.

You should be learning from South Korea and how they managed their brief rule under dictatorship.

They didn’t waste time chasing the one man with absolute immunity.

They went after the structure.

The aides. The enforcers. The loyalists. The architects.

They knocked out the foundation one pillar at a time —

until the “strongman” had no one left to stand on.

And his power crumbled beneath him.

You should be independently investigating every author of Project 2025,

every aide who defies court orders,

every communications director repeating lies,

every policy writer enabling cruelty,

every water boy who keeps this engine running.

You can’t stop a regime by asking the king to sit down.

You dismantle the throne he’s standing on — one coward at a time.

⸻

Stop being scared to fight dirty when the other side is fighting to erase the damn Constitution.

They are threatening to disappear AMERICANS.

A M E R I C A N S.

And your biggest move can’t be another strongly worded email.

We don’t want your urgently fundraising subject lines.

We want backbone.

We want action.

We want to know you’ll stand up before we’re all ordered to sit down — permanently.

We are watching.

And I don’t just mean your base.

I mean millions of us who see exactly what’s happening.

I’ve only got 6,000 followers — but the groups I’m in? The networks I touch? Over a quarter million.

Often when I speak, it echoes.

But when we ALL

speak, it ROARS with pressure that will cause change.

We need to be deafening.

You still have a chance to do something historic.

To be remembered for courage, not caution.

To go down as the party that didn’t just watch the fall — but fought the hell back with everything they had.

But the clock is ticking.

And the deportation buses are idling.>

Like this, <fredfradiavolo>, <vermin> that you are?