Republican Rep. Moves to Undermine Judicial System on Trump’s Behalf

The Republican show of force at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial over the week has culminated in a formal effort to get the U.S. legislature to intervene in the process of the judiciary system.

Representative Andy Ogles introduced legislation Thursday to undermine the partial gag order imposed on the GOP presidential nominee. Trump is prohibited from publicly disparaging court staff, prosecutors, jurors, witnesses, or their family members during the course of the trial.

Ogles’s bill, called the “Let Trump Speak Act,” would severely restrict the limitations a gag order can place on a defendant, effectively undoing Trump’s order and preventing judges in future criminal or civil proceedings from reining him in with a gag. The act would also allow Trump to sue judges who gag him, Ogles claimed on Real America’s Voice.

“We have watched for years as a politically weaponized Department of Justice and Democrat activist judges have gone after President Donald J. Trump,” the Tennessee Republican told Fox News Digital. “There is no right more sacred to Americans than the right to speak freely, as guaranteed in the First Amendment.”

Trump has claimed the restriction is tantamount to “election interference,” effectively claiming that being unable to openly attack participants in the trial is illegal as it has hampered his reelection campaign.

A slew of Trump’s allies showed up to his hush-money trial this week in a collective show of support behind the criminally charged former president. Some of the politicos who trekked up to New York include House Speaker Mike Johnson, Representatives Matt Gaetz and Eli Crane, and Senators Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, and Tommy Tuberville. Members of the House Oversight Committee, including Representatives Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna, also made the journey Thursday, going so far as to reschedule a contempt markup for Attorney General Merrick Garland so that they could be in the background of Trump’s trial.

On Tuesday, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, Eric Trump, and two Republican representatives showed up at the New York courthouse in matching suits and ties for a low-budget fundraising ad that attempted to portray Trump as a candidate unjustly locked in the courthouse.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Durbin’s call comes after reports that an upside-down U.S. flag flew outside of Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, as rioters stormed the Capitol in effort to overturn the 2020 election. 

“Flying an upside-down American flag—a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement—clearly creates the appearance of bias,” Durbin said to The Hill. “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering.”

The U.S. flag is usually flown upside down in times of distress, like in the case of an SOS. In recent years, it has been adopted by the far right, as well as Trump supporters, to say “Stop the Steal” regarding the 2020 election. While Alito blamed his wife for putting up the flag, such an act in January 2021 would still appear to violate the Supreme Court’s new judicial code of ethics, adopted last November, which recommends avoiding political statements and avoiding the appearance of bias. Durbin mentioned the code in his statement.

“The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust,” Durbin said. “Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest.”

The senator from Illinois was slow to respond to recent ethics scandals on the Supreme Court, despite having subpoena power. In November, Durbin backed off  a vote to subpoena Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo, two major conservative donors connected to Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas. This time, will Durbin’s call be backed up with action?

Project 2025 associates shared new details Friday about their plans for an expansive immigration crackdown—including mass deportations—under Trump. The group’s focus on immigration seeks to have executive orders and policy memos ready for use on day one of a second Trump presidency, undoing portions of Biden’s immigration policies and setting the stage to realize Trump’s desire to mass-deport up to 20 million people

According to details shared to The Wall Street Journal, Trump allies have found one of their main sources of inspiration for the giant deportation campaign: the U.K. Rwanda plan. The group is working to identify countries that would accept people deported from the United States, much like a similar effort between the U.K. and Rwanda, which is currently mired in legal entanglements.

Trump allies are also working out ways to make asylum hearings move faster to speed up deportation eligibility and remove deportation protections created by Biden that would impact hundreds of thousands of people.

These new details of Project 2025’s agenda were revealed by The Wall Street Journal simultaneously with similar revelations shared with Reuters about Project 2025’s aspirations to neutralize the Department of Justice’s independent investigative authority and convert it into a conservative attack dog. Combining its efforts to alter the Department of Justice with legally murky mass-deportation initiatives could present an authoritarian dynamic that removes legal impediments to actualize its deportation goals.

Project 2025 is a coalition effort of conservative groups that seek to dismantle long-standing frameworks of democracy to turn the U.S. into an ultranationalist, hyperconservative, authoritarian society. While its objective prioritizes a Trump presidency, the coalition operates independently from the Trump campaign. Leading Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation, a heavy hitter in conservative policymaking, and the America First Policy Initiative, a newer group that has been described as “just a grift.”

Trump’s campaign has denied associations with efforts being crafted on behalf of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, with Trump senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita telling both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal: “Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official.”

LaCivita and Wiles claim details made public of Project 2025’s efforts to streamline Trump’s conservative agenda ahead of the election are “an effort to prevent a second Trump administration.” Neither adviser rebuffed the aspirations behind Project 2025, which are being crafted in line with Trump’s public statements regarding mass deportations and the Department of Justice.

Donald Trump received the day off from his hush-money trial to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation, and actually managed to show up for his youngest child Friday morning. But don’t worry—he has plans to dip almost immediately after.

Trump, his wife, Melania, and Melania’s father, Viktor Knavs, were among the guests in the audience at Oxbridge Academy’s graduation ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida, Friday morning.

The former president posted a very short message on Truth Social announcing his attendance Friday morning: “Going to Barron’s High School Graduation. Great student, wonderful boy! Very exciting!!! DJT.”

Trump had complained that the judge in his hush-money trial, Juan Merchan, was preventing him from attending the ceremony, when in reality New York state law requires criminal defendants to attend all of their trial proceedings. Reportedly, Melania was not happy with the former president mentioning their son’s graduation in court and bringing unwanted attention upon their son. The former president’s lawyers asked Merchan for the day off, which was later granted.

Oxbridge Academy said that its graduation ceremony this year was private and invitation-only, and asked the press not to attend.

After Barron’s graduation ceremony, Trump will be flying to St. Paul, Minnesota, to speak at the Republican Party of Minnesota’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner in the evening, which means that any graduation day plans Barron has will likely not include his father.

“We are thrilled to welcome President Trump back to Minnesota to headline our Lincoln Reagan dinner, an annual tradition that reminds us of the roots of our Party and the leaders who have been most impactful in promoting our American values. I can think of no one more fitting to join us this year than President Trump,” Minnesota GOP chair David Hann said in a statement.

As far as post–high school plans, Barron was chosen as an at-large delegate for the Republican National Convention, only to pull out due to prior commitments, according to a statement from his mother. He plans to attend college but is reportedly still deciding where to go.

President Joe Biden’s decision to invoke executive privilege to keep House Republicans from getting their hands on audio recordings of his controversial interview with special counsel Robert Hur has seemingly transformed into a fundraising opportunity for some of the lawmakers leading his impeachment probe.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer leveraged the fiasco in a campaign email Thursday afternoon, asking constituents if they would consider throwing cash his way over the issue.

“This could be the final blow to Biden with swing voters across the country,” the email read. “You and I know he’s not up for the job, but the mainstream media’s refusal to report on it is the only thing keeping him in the game.”

That might be a helpful line for Comer, since the chairman wasted months pursuing a baseless and unsuccessful impeachment inquiry into the president, largely based on the claims of an indicted former FBI informant who has since reportedly admitted the scheme was cooked up by top Russian intelligence officials.

But Comer didn’t seem keen to campaign on other recent instances in which a president leveraged executive privilege to cover up his behavior, as Trump did over the Mueller report or to avoid consequences for taking several thousand sensitive or classified documents from the White House—even if some of those actions resulted in criminal charges.

Biden’s move to keep the interview tapes under wraps came at the request of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who warned that cooperating with the GOP request could jeopardize future investigations and witnesses’ willingness to participate in them. In his letter to Biden, made public Thursday, Garland said that lawmakers’ efforts “are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”

White House counsel Ed Siskel also questioned the motivations of Republicans seeking the tapes when they already possess a lengthy report and full transcript of the interview, accusing the caucus of seeking to “chop them up” and “distort” the recordings for “partisan political purposes.”

Democratic Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz was quick to call Comer out about the fundraising email, delivering a spirited reading of the message during an Oversight Committee hearing late Thursday.

New details have emerged of plans by Trump allies to dismantle democracy under a second Trump administration by packing the Department of Justice with Trump loyalists and shrinking the independent scope of the FBI. The plans, as detailed by Reuters, seek to craft a DOJ to advance conservative agendas, heavily curtail civil liberties, and impede investigations into corruption by Trump and his allies.

The plans laid out by Trump allies to convert the FBI into a politically charged conservative attack dog come from the authoritarian aspirations of Project 2025, a sprawling network led by conservative think tanks that comb through existing law to find loopholes and precedent for Trump—or any conservative president—to enact extreme right-wing policies and consolidate power at a moment’s notice.

Trump allies plan to nuke consent decrees, a sort of contractual oversight agreement between the Department of Justice and local police departments, to curb civil rights abuses. They also want to downgrade the FBI’s access to the attorney general, instead making the FBI head report to two politically installed assistant attorneys general.

Steve Bradbury, who served as transportation secretary under Trump and who spoke with Reuters about these plans, claimed in backward fashion that the DOJ acting independently from the president’s wishes poses a “recipe for abuse of power.”

“Whenever you have power centers ... that have enormous resources, coercive power and investigative tools at their disposal, and they are presumed to be independent of any control down the chain of command from the president, that is a recipe for abuse of power,” Bradbury told Reuters.

Conservatives have long called to dismantle the FBI following investigations into Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign and indictments by the DOJ of participants in the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump allies want to reduce the scope of the FBI’s investigative authority, leaving the department to focus solely on “large-scale crimes and threats to national security,” from which insurrection and sedition by conservatives are, naturally, excluded. A January report by the National Institute of Justice found far-right extremism has continued to outpace all other forms of domestic terrorism since 1990.

Plans to dramatically alter the DOJ to act as an extension of conservative ambitions rather than an independent agency follow a similar pattern to Trump’s overhaul of the Supreme Court and packing conservative judges throughout the federal circuit as president—changes that led to the overturning of Roe after Trump left office and a continuation of attacks on LGBTQ+ freedoms and civil rights today. If reelected, Trump’s allies would replicate that process at the Department of Justice.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s ballot drive in Texas may have unintended consequences for a Lone Star politician seeking reelection: Senator Ted Cruz.

While Kennedy is still working to get his name on the ballot for the presidential race, pollsters predict that his mere presence will summon more voters to the booth come November—voters who won’t necessarily join Cruz’s camp when they see his name elsewhere on the ballot. Instead, experts predict that voters who turn out for Kennedy will more likely support Democratic Representative Colin Allred, Cruz’s opponent in the November race.

“This is definitely not good for Cruz,” Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, told The Hill. “Kennedy’s presence on the ballot could actually help Democrats.”

Kennedy’s campaign announced earlier this week that more than twice as many people as required—some 245,000 Texans—had provided signatures to get him onto the ballot.

“If you can get on in Texas, you can get on everywhere,” Kennedy said at a campaign rally.

The demographic likely to turn out for the 70-year-old independent candidate includes both Democratic and Republican voters, meaning Kennedy is expected to pull support from President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But Kennedy’s camp also, surprisingly, includes a swath of young voters who historically don’t participate in elections—but their presence this year could reshape Texas politics.

“RFK Jr. is likely to mobilize a group of voters to turn out and vote in the presidential race who, absent his presidency, would not have participated,” Jones told The Hill. “Once those voters are through casting a vote in the first race as president, they’re going to start to go down the ballot.”

On Thursday night, a House Oversight Committee hearing on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt quickly went off the rails, thanks to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insulting Representative Jasmine Crockett’s appearance.

The hearing was taking place because Garland refused to turn over recordings between President Biden and special counsel Robert Hur. Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and the committee’s ranking member, was making opening remarks, before being repeatedly interrupted by Greene. In one such interruption, Greene asked if any Democrats on the committee were employing the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.

“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” Crockett said, and Raskin remarked, “Is she a porn star?” to Greene’s question, referencing adult film actress Stormy Daniels at the center of Trump’s case.

“You know what we’re here for,” Greene said, and, speaking over Crockett, added, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” to loud groans and protests in the room.

“That’s beneath even you, Ms. Greene,” Raskin said, as Committee Chair James Comer tried and failed to call for order. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly moved to have Greene’s words stricken from the congressional record.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez said loudly. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person!”

“Are your feelings hurt?” Greene retorted, to which Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Baby girl, don’t even play.”

Greene refused to apologize for her insult to Crockett, and in response, Greene’s words were not taken down. Greene continued to argue with Ocasio-Cortez, asking to debate her, before insulting the New York congresswoman’s intelligence. But then, Crockett asked for a point of order.

“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling: If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” Crockett asked aloud, drawing audible laughs, a smirk from Raskin, and visible confusion from Comer, who did not understand what was going on.

Watch the whole sequence below:

In a tweet later in the evening, Crockett called out Greene for refusing to apologize and Comer for allowing her remarks.

“This is what happens when mentally deficient people who can’t read and follow rules or just don’t give a damn … somehow end up in CONGRESS!” Crockett posted.

Procedural matters over interruptions would slow things down considerably, and at one point, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert, who has feuded with Greene, voted with Democrats against a motion to allow Greene to speak. The chaotic atmosphere even seemed to spill over just outside the hearing.

“We have some members in the room who are drinking inside the hearing room … who are not on this committee,” complained Representative Melanie Stansbury.

The hearing would eventually conclude, with the committee voting to hold Garland in contempt. For Greene, Thursday night’s events may have hurt standing with her fellow Republicans even further, as she has already drawn her colleagues’ ire for her failed attempt to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. For Republicans themselves, it’s the latest example of a party and caucus in poor health, ruled by chaos.

All rise for the honorable wife blamer: In cowardly fashion, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is blaming his wife for an upside-down American flag that flew outside the couple’s home in January 2021 ahead of Biden’s inauguration, a prominent symbol among the anti-government far-right and which experts say is a clear violation of ethics rules against bias.

In a story first reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the Alitos flew the inverted flag outside their home for “several days” in January 2021, with neighbors photographing it on January 17 and discussing its enduring presence on January 18. While the exact dates it was flown are unknown, the flag flew between the January 6 Capitol riot—where pro-Trump conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists waved that same flag—and the January 20 presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.

Long used as a naval distress symbol, the inverted flag has occasionally been used in anti-war and anti-fascist protests. Now, it most commonly appears among the anti-government far-right—a somewhat ironic choice for the home of a Supreme Court justice, whose work directly influences how the government operates. In January 2021, it was a prominent symbol during the “Stop the Steal” protests against the certification of the presidential election as Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol.

Justice Alito said the flag was part of a passive-aggressive dispute between his wife, in dire need of a hobby, and their neighbors, who had placed an “anti-Trump sign with an expletive” on their lawn. But that fails to justify what judicial experts say is a clear violation of SCOTUS’s ethics rules, which prohibit even a whiff of bias.

“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, in an interview with the Times.

The conservative justice previously took an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in 2008 with a Republican billionaire donor who later presented cases to the Supreme Court, apparently in violation of federal law. The corruption-inclined Clarence Thomas and his election denialist wife must be so proud of their little protégés.

In the three years since the flag flew, the Alitos had plenty of time to come up with a better excuse. Claiming it was placed there by an outside agitator would be an easy fan favorite with conservatives. Or they could have claimed they just didn’t realize they put it upside-down because when they were affixing it to the pole a rabid squirrel jumped out of a bush and started attacking them and they were so they just put it up and ran away and were too afraid of the squirrel to leave their house for several days. Sky’s the limit when you’re a judge on the highest court in the land accountable to practically no one with a wife far too invested in wackadoo conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump basically did the prosecution’s work for them while ad libbing outside the courthouse of his New York hush-money trial, admitting that he did, actually, have an NDA with porn actress Stormy Daniels.

“Andrew McCarthy: NDAs are legal and common. Yet, Bragg alleges Trump’s was illegal,” Trump read off a sheet of paper Thursday, quoting Andrew McCarthy in the National Review before facetiously inserting a telling line: “I have the only illegal NDA.”

Trump then continued to react to lines from McCarthy’s online blog post.

“‘It seems that Trump’s crime by blue state lights was winning the election.’ That was my crime. I won an election that I wasn’t supposed to win against Hillary Clinton. And that’s not a crime,” Trump said.

Trump’s attorneys have attempted to argue that the funds to pay off Daniels came exclusively from his fixer, Michael Cohen, and that Trump had zero awareness of the actual payments. Cohen, for his part, has repeatedly outed Trump as a “micromanager” who was aware of his every move, telling the court on Monday that the pair spoke “every single day, and multiple times a day.” And, if they weren’t able to communicate one-on-one, Cohen said he would often communicate with Trump via one of his other close confidants, including his former assistant Rhona Graff, Trump Organization employee turned director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller, Trump’s children, or Hope Hicks.

Other witnesses in the criminal trial have also pointed to Trump as the obvious and understood originator of the hush-money payments, even if it wasn’t explicitly mentioned to them at the time.

The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.