Jack Smith Scores Another Win in Trump’s January 6 Case

Judge Tanya Chutkan is blowing past Donald Trump’s efforts to waylay his January 6 trial schedule, deciding on Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith will be allowed to move forward with a proposal to submit a 180-page brief of evidence related to the case.

Trump’s legal team, which includes Todd Blanche and John Lauro, have continually argued in recent weeks that such a brief would be “incredibly unfair” to Trump so close to the election. But Chutkan’s latest ruling plainly rejects that line of thinking, determining that the matter of the election is irrelevant to the case’s timeline, and that Trump’s legal team had failed to follow the proper procedures in order to legitimately reconsider the schedule.

“For the second time in a week, Defendant urges reconsideration of the current pretrial schedule in a brief intended to respond to a separate issue, and without actually filing a motion to that effect,” Chutkan wrote. “The court has already addressed the scheduling objections Defendant raised when he was given an opportunity to do so.”

According to the judge, Smith’s brief would also resolve issues pertaining to the lingering issues of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling expanding presidential immunity “at the earliest possible stages” of the trial. “That is reason enough to grant the present motion,” Chutkan wrote.

Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump in August. The pared-down indictment largely focuses on Trump’s private and non-official actions, since the Supreme Court granted the former president broad immunity for official acts, thereby nixing them as evidence.

The case hinges on the allegation that Trump knew he had lost the election but still tried to subvert the results, as proven by conversations he had with then-Vice President Mike Pence and his lawyers. Admissions by Trump from earlier this month—including that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden “by a whisker”—could further damn his chances at trial.

“Allowing a brief from the Government is not ‘contrary to law procedure, and custom,’ as Defendant claims,” Chutkan continued. “It is simply how litigation works.”

Trump’s attorneys had attempted to preempt the brief by describing it as a “180-page false hit piece” and mocked the idea that the document would be of “great assistance” to the court, reported The Hill.

“The requested 180-page brief would be tantamount to a premature and improper Special Counsel report,” Trump’s legal team said.

After weeks of being demonized by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies on the right, members of the Haitian community are taking legal action against the former president and his running mate.

The Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigration-focused nonprofit organization, filed an affidavit Tuesday in Clark County Municipal Court in Ohio asking for charges to be filed against Trump and Vance for spreading “harmful lies” against Haitian immigrants in the state, specifically in Springfield. Ohio law allows for citizens to file affidavits for criminal offenses.

In the affidavit, the group asked a judge to find probable cause to charge Trump and Vance with making false alarms, aggravated menacing, disrupting public services, and telecommunications harassment, alleging that “at every turn,” the pair were told that the racist narrative of Haitians killing and eating pets, ducks, and geese was false. The affidavit cited Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, Springfield’s city manager, local residents, and the press all pointing out the rumor’s falsehood. 

“Trump knew his statements about Springfield’s Haitian community were false and likely to cause a public inconvenience and alarm. He knew because his and Vance’s words were already causing public inconvenience and alarm, as expressed by the mayor and the governor,” the affidavit said.

The former president and Ohio’s junior senator have attempted to use the false rumor for political advantage, with Trump using it to boost his plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants despite the fact that Springfield’s Haitians are in the U.S. legally. Vance hasn’t been any better, saying that “if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

But the lies have consequences, as the Haitian Bridge Alliance’s legal filing points out: Springfield has received violent threats to its schools, hospitals, and government buildings, and the town canceled its annual CultureFest. Unfortunately, recent history shows that actually holding Trump accountable is a near-impossible task. Whatever this legal filing accomplishes, perhaps it will at least discredit Trump and Vance for bringing unwanted attention to a small town that actually asked the immigrants to come and boost its fading economy.

Donald Trump’s speech went completely off the rails during a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia, Tuesday.

Trump lurched over the podium as he sped through several different topics, dispensing falsehoods at an event that was intended to be about the economy. To be sure, Trump did talk about his tariffs, saying, “The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word. One of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard. It’s music to my ears.”

As Trump continued, he appeared to be out of it, misspeaking several times.

“We did so much! We gave you—before—the greatest, the biggest tax hikes in the history of our country,” Trump boasted. In reality, the former president installed a series of tax cuts that mostly benefited the country’s top one percent of earners.

Later, Trump referred to Charlottesville, Virginia, as “Charlottestown.”

Trump spoke so rapidly that, at one point, the Republican nominee appeared to wipe drool from his lip. He went on to claim that California was plagued by “blackouts and brownouts” and experienced one “every 10 seconds,” which was preventing people from using air conditioning during the summer.

Trump seemed particularly animated as he rattled between different outlandish claims.

“I HAVE A CHART, that’s my all time favorite. I love that. Is it around? Is it a—?” Trump wandered away from the podium. Finding no chart, he pretended one was floating behind him and acted out hugging and kissing it, while the audience applauded. “I LOVE that chart. I sleep with that chart, every night I kiss it. I love it.”

He continued to spread disputed claims that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. “They’re going to take over a lot more than Aurora, they’re going to go through Colorado, take over the whole damn state, unless … I become president,” Trump said, smiling.

Trump also joked that in Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Rob Rue was “looking for interpreters.” When his line fell flat, he repeated it again: “He’s looking all over the, f—interpreters. Because they can’t understand, the language is totally different. What the hell?”

Trump then repeated his baseless claim that Kamala Harris never actually worked at McDonald’s, again offering to try a shift there.

“She lied about McDonald’s. She said, ‘I was a worker in McDonald’s. And I stood over the french fries—.’ I’m going to a McDonald’s over the next two weeks. And I’M GOING TO STAND OVER THE FRENCH FRIES! Because I want to see what her job really wasn’t like,” Trump ranted.

While speaking about Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, the former president said he doubted anyone could beat Russia. “That’s what they do is, they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do, they fight,” Trump said.

As far as using incendiary rhetoric about his opponent goes, Trump began his speech promising that if elected, Harris would “destroy” the country, and ended it after warning that a Harris victory might mean “this could be your last election.”

Despite spending months trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, the top of the Republican presidential ticket seems committed to bringing the Christian nationalist manifesto closer to the White House.

Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance has enlisted key allies, including a Project 2025 contributor, in his debate prep sessions ahead of his first face-off against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on October 1, according to CNN.

Monica Crowley, who served as the United States assistant secretary of the Treasury for public affairs in the Trump administration, will assist Vance as a mock moderator this week, according to two unnamed sources that spoke with CNN. Crowley is listed in the Project 2025 policy book as a contributor. Project 2025 describes contributors as people who “generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of the volume’s 30 chapters.”  

Vance has appeared remarkably open to the 920-page, far-right agenda. The Ohio senator has previously applauded Project 2025’s policy goals, telling Newsmax in July that “there are some good ideas in there,” and has advanced ideas for a second Trump administration that align with the project’s details, including overhauling the federal government with thousands of cherry-picked Trump loyalists.

Crowley is reportedly involved with the debate preparations in order to make the mock sessions feel as “real and professional” as possible.

“One of the benefits of doing hostile media nonstop is you become very well-versed in dealing with attacks on your record,” one source with direct knowledge of the preparation told CNN. “We have a lot of confidence in J.D. speaking about policy. The goal is to focus on Walz and his weaknesses.”

Project 2025 has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But just Monday night, he made a campaign promise straight out of the Project 2025 playbook: abolishing the Department of Education.

Senator Joe Manchin is retiring at the end of his term, but that won’t stop him from being a Democratic Party pooper all the way through the November election.

On Tuesday, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement that she would do away with the filibuster in order to pass federal abortion protections, Manchin said this move was a step too far and that he’d rescind his endorsement of Harris for president.

“She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids,” said Manchin, speaking about the 200-year-old Senate rule to CNN. In his rant, Manchin seemed to paint Harris as a threat to democracy, appearing to forget who else is on the ballot.

Manchin said Harris’s plan to end the filibuster in favor of a simple majority vote is enough to make him rescind his support for her as the Democratic candidate. “I’m not endorsing. I think that’s basically something that can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology.”

He went on to call ending the filibuster “the most horrible thing.” In the real world, perhaps bleeding out in a hospital parking lot is more horrible.

In his time in the Senate, Manchin used his commitment to the filibuster’s 60-vote hurdle to stop critical popular legislation such as voting rights legislation in 2022.

The West Virginia politician who made his millions from fossil fuels and recently registered as an independent also took the chance to get another jab in at the vice president when asked about her past positions on the filibuster. “Well, she said she supported banning fracking too, and she changed that. I was hoping she would change this,” said Manchin.

Kamala Harris has a plan for restoring abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade.

On Tuesday, Vice President Harris said she would support eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to bring back federal abortion protections.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Harris made clear that she supports averting the usual 60-vote threshold in the Senate and using 51 votes to put reproductive rights back into law “for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”

This comes after Senator Bernie Sanders, who previously had stood strong in support of the filibuster, said earlier this month that he would make an exception to the rule to pass abortion rights. In August, Senator Chuck Schumer suggested that Democrats would try to use the filibuster carve-out after November.

Back in 2022, Joe Biden indicated his support for a filibuster carve-out specifically to codify Roe but met roadblocks like Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who previously halted filibuster reform.

Reinstating federal abortion rights could prove to be a salient issue for voters in swing states.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump wants women voters to “no longer be thinking about abortion” as he’ll serve as their “protector.”

Earlier this year, two U.S. government authorities determined that Israel was deliberately blocking food and medicine deliveries into Gaza during its brutal massacre in the territory.

But even after the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau shared their findings with senior diplomats in late April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress almost the exact opposite days later, ProPublica reported Tuesday, citing leaked reports.

In a statement to Congress on May 10, Blinken said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Before his statement to Congress, Blinken received a 17-page memo from USAID on Israel’s conduct, obtained by ProPublica, which described instances of Israel killing aid workers, bombing hospitals and ambulances, tearing down agricultural structures, regularly turning away trucks of food and medicine, and sitting on supply depots.

Food for Gaza, including flour that could have fed nearly 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, was stockpiled less than 30 miles from the Gazan border in an Israeli port, the memo stated. In February, however, Israel stopped allowing flour into the territory, accusing the recipient, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, of having ties to Hamas. An independent investigation would find no evidence for Israel’s claims.

On its own, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration also concluded that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid, recommending that nearly $830 million in weapons and bombs to Israel, paid by U.S. taxpayers, should be frozen under the Foreign Assistance Act. USAID echoed the recommendation, writing in its memo that the U.S. should pause additional arms sales to the country.

These findings appear to have been either overlooked or ignored by Blinken and other leading Biden administration officials. The United Nations has declared a famine in Gaza, saying that many Palestinians in the territory go days without food and that many children have starved to death. The war also has created a health emergency in Gaza, including the territory’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.

The State Department issued a statement in response to questions from ProPublica, claiming that it had pressured Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.

“As we made clear in May when [our] report was released, the US had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed to a lack of sustained delivery of needed humanitarian assistance,” the statement read. “Israel subsequently took steps to facilitate increased humanitarian access and aid flow into Gaza.”

The U.S. government’s handling of USAID’s memo led to internal conflict, with one official in the State Department, Stacy Gilbert, resigning in May over Blinken’s statement to Congress.

“There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” Gilbert wrote in a statement at the time. “To deny this is absurd and shameful. That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”

There are no signs that Blinken or the Biden administration plan to change their policies toward Israel or its war in Gaza, even as the war has killed more than 41,467 Palestinians, including 16,500 children, almost certainly undercounts and not including death tolls from Israel’s military attacks in the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Even in the face of evidence collected by U.S. agencies themselves, the Biden administration refuses to consider an arms embargo against Israel or acknowledge Israel’s many war crimes.

Even Donald Trump’s allies can’t seem to find any evidence of the Haitian immigrant conspiracy that’s plagued Springfield, Ohio, since it was elevated by the top of the Republican presidential ticket two weeks ago.

After a visit to the beleaguered Ohio town, biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy brushed off the plainly racist MAGA theory that Haitian residents had been stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

“Having gone to Springfield, I didn’t see that evidence,” Ramaswamy said during a Tuesday appearance on CNN, before attempting to flip the script back on Democrats.

“So when we’re getting into fact-checking, I think we should apply the same standard 360 degrees,” Ramaswamy continued, referring to comments Kamala Harris has made about women “bleeding out in parking lots” due to abortion bans.

Host Kasie Hunt was quick to push back, mentioning Amber Thurman, a woman who died in Georgia after waiting more than 20 hours for care under the state’s restrictive abortion ban. But Ramaswamy was unfazed, despite having just admitted that there is truth behind Harris’s words and none behind Trump’s.

“Let’s not use the fringe words that somebody on either side might say,” he said. “And let’s focus on the actual content of the debate, even when we disagree most. I think that’s going to be a key step to reviving our country.”

Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even J.D. Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the Haitian immigrant conspiracy is false.

Since Vance and Trump began elevating the myth just two weeks ago, Springfield has received at least 33 bomb threats, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities, including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School.

Meanwhile, the surrounding area has seen a restructuring of its local Republican boards in light of the controversial conspiracy. One Ohio sheriff lost his election duties after he elevated the conspiracy by inviting locals to send him the addresses of constituents with Harris-Walz signage in their yards.

Donald Trump just can’t stop talking about Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s—and now he’s escalating things for absolutely no reason.

Harris has previously said that she worked at the popular fast food chain when she was a college student, and referred to her experience as part of her call for livable wages and protections for workers from sexual harassment and abuse.

Trump, whose first job as the son of a real estate mogul was investing in real estate, seemingly cannot tolerate this bullet point on Harris’s résumé, and has latched on to right-wing conspiracy theories that it was a lie. The former president has become so obsessed with trying to discredit Harris’s job experience that he told a crowd of his supporters he would try out working at McDonald’s for the day.

“I think I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s next week, some place,” Trump said during a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s, and I’m going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is.”

As Trump spoke about Harris’s résumé, he got so worked up he started shouting, almost incoherently. “But she said she worked, and grew up in terrible conditions, she worked at McDonald’s, it was such—SHE NEVER WORKED THERE!

“And these FAKE news reporters will never report it. They don’t want to report it because they’re FAKE! They’re FAKE! They don’t want to report it,” Trump said. Unfortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, the press does not typically report on stories if they’re not true.

“She never worked at McDonald’s, but it was a big part of her résumé,” Trump continued.

Here, Trump appears to overstate the role that Harris has given her experience at McDonald’s. Harris explained at a campaign event in June 2019 that “I did the french fries and I did the ice cream.”

Trump explained his own in-depth fact-checking process, to show how he was able to determine Harris was lying: “They went to, they went to the different places, ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ She said, ‘We don’t know who the hell she is, leave us the hell alone, we’re making hamburgers!’” He did not clarify who the “she” who told “them” to leave her alone is.

Clearly, Harris’s claim that she worked at McDonald’s is eating away at Trump—he already ranted about the same thing in a post on Truth Social last week.

“How bad is it when a Candidate running for Office makes a major part of her Campaign that she works at McDonald’s, and it turns out not to be true, but the worst part is the Media refuses to talk about it!” Trump wrote.

At a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Donald Trump railed against Haitian immigrants, riling up the crowd who began chanting for their deportation.

Trump warned that left-wing think tanks are trying to “inundate” small towns like those in Pennsylvania, changing their character, and claimed that “they will never be the same.” He then mentioned the increase of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—who are in the country legally—and alluded to the racist pet-eating conspiracy that his campaign has helped to fuel.

“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think. The fact is, and I’ll say it now, you have to get ’em the hell out, you have to get ’em out, I’m sorry,” Trump said. “Get ’em out. Can’t have it. Can’t have it. They’ve destroyed it.”

The crowd roared its approval as soon as Trump said, “Get ’em out,” and then began chanting, “Send them back.”

For several weeks, Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have repeated and fueled a racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are capturing and eating pets, ducks, and geese, with Trump even repeating it during the presidential debate. Trump has used it to bolster his plan for mass deportations if he returns to the White House, and Vance has doubled down despite being fully aware that the story isn’t true. Meanwhile, the town has been inundated with violent threats to its hospitals, schools, and government buildings.

Last week, Trump singled out another town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania, for its Haitian population, drawing an immediate response from town officials, who said that Trump’s claims weren’t true. Like the immigrants in Springfield, Charleroi’s recent arrivals are in the United States legally. But the Trump campaign isn’t likely to stop its attacks, especially since the former president and convicted felon relied on anti-immigrant slogans in his first campaign in 2016. It will be up to Democrats to find a way to counter Trump’s hateful and odious message.