Democrat News

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Conservative cable news channel Newsmax is getting a Trump bump on Wall Street.

The Boca Raton, Fla., outlet‘s stock price surged after its initial public offering Monday. Shares offered at $10 closed at $233 a share Tuesday afternoon, giving the company a market valuation of over $20 billion.

Newsmax itself tracked the stock’s movement onscreen throughout the day.

The Newsmax performance is surprising, considering the company — whose business is pure-cable play — has scant revenue from pay TV operators, according to analysts. (Chris Ruddy, Newsmax founder and chief executive, told CNBC Monday that the network is getting carriage fees).

Newmax has no blue chip advertisers, making it largely dependent on direct-to-consumer marketers, many of whom sell Trump-related products. The commercials that air on Newsmax often have conservative TV personalities as spokespeople.

The IPO comes at a time when the traditional cable business is eroding, as consumers are bypassing pay TV subscriptions. A 10-K filing ahead of the public offering warned that “changes in consumer behavior and evolving technologies and distribution platforms may adversely affect the company’s business, financial condition and results of operations.”

The company does offer a direct-to-consumer digital product, Newsmax+, which subscribers can use to stream the network’s programming for $4.99 a month.

The early performance of the stock is likely being driven by President Trump’s enthusiastic supporters, who are super-served by Newsmax commentators providing a positive narrative for the White House throughout the day. Newsmax touted the IPO in its programming.

Wall Street saw similar movement with Trump Media Technology Group, the president’s social media venture that owns Truth Social, which traded as high as $100 a few months after its IPO in 2022 but then fell dramatically. The stock rose again during his 2024 presidential campaign. It’s now trading at around $20.

Newsmax had a brief period in 2020 and early 2021 when its ratings surged to all-time highs as it attracted conservative viewers despondent over Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Many Trump supporters were angry with Fox News after it correctly called the state of Arizona for Biden several days before its rivals. Newsmax waited weeks before calling Biden the president-elect.

Fox News eventually bounced back and currently has 70% of the audience for cable news, its most dominant share ever, according to Nielsen.

Newsmax‘s audience grew last year and the company touts its position as the fourth most-watched cable news channel behind Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. In the first quarter of 2025, Newsmax averaged 305,000 viewers in prime time according to Nielsen, ranking 18th among all cable networks.

The network lost $72 million in 2024, despite an increase in revenue. Last year, Newsmax paid $40 million to voting software company Smartmatic to settle a defamation lawsuit. Smartmatic was also given an option to buy shares in the company.

Smartmatic’s suit said Newsmax provided a platform for its hosts, Trump and his attorneys and allies to falsely claim that the company’s software was manipulated to deliver the election for Biden.

Newsmax is facing a similar $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in 2023 after it sued over the network’s presentation of Trump’s false claims.

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Amber Ruffin isn’t going to perform for the White House Correspondents’ Assn.’s dinner later this month after the group’s board decided unanimously to un-invite her as its featured entertainer.

WHCA President Eugene Daniels — who recently joined MSNBC as a weekend host — said in a Saturday email to members that the organization’s board had unanimously decided to lose the comedian and refocus the event on journalistic excellence rather than “the politics of division,” Politico reported.

He didn’t mention that Ruffin said on a podcast last week that the Trump administration was “kind of a bunch of murderers” who wanted the “false equivalency that the media does” because it “makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, because they’re not” — and that there was “no way” she was going to mock both parties at the dinner. Or that Trump’s deputy chief of staff had called out the organization Friday for featuring a “2nd rate comedian” at the dinner and the next day referred to Ruffin as a “garbage, hate-filled comedian.”

To comment on events — sort of — Ruffin popped up Monday on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” the show where she’s worked as a writer and performer since 2014.

Meyers was talking about a supposed robbery at a bodega when the comedian materialized on set, saying, “Honestly, I’m concerned with how you’re going to end that joke.”

“Obviously, I’m going to make a punchline to make fun of the guy who robbed the bodega,” the host replied.

“See, Seth, the problem is, that’s divisive,” Ruffin said with sarcasm. “Take it from me. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense in this case,” Meyers said, playing the straight man. “There’s an innocent bodega owner. There’s a burglar.”

“Or — hear me out — there are very fine people on both sides,” she said. The audience laughed as she invoked comments made by President Trump when he was asked in 2017 about violence around the tearing down of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, N.C. Demonstrations for and against the removal of the statue had happened amid a far-right rally organized by white nationalists.

Not mentioned, perhaps because Ruffin is in the business of jokes, was the part where Trump also said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?”

Back on the late-night show, Meyers and Ruffin went back and forth. “Yeah, but he shattered the front door of a bodega,” Meyers said.

“Did he?” Ruffin replied. “Or did he provide an innovative ventilation system?”

Stealing from the till? “He received a micro-loan.” Setting fire to the ATM? “He bravely fought inflation.”

Finally, Meyers said, “Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point that out on television.”

“I thought that too,” she said. “On Friday. But today is Monday. And Monday’s Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully. When you’re watching ‘The Sound of Music,’ you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”

“You mean the Nazis?” Meyers asked.

“Calling them that is so one-sided!” she answered.

The exchange continued apace with Ruffin ultimately saying that she was glad she had been stopped from making her speech at the dinner, because “Ooh baby, I would have been so terrifically mean.”

Then Ruffin said she had to run because she had to return the dress she planned to wear to the correspondents dinner.

“I already took the tags off,” she said, “but I’m gonna just say they blew off in the wind.”

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When the White House fired a federal prosecutor last week in Los Angeles, it could’ve been dismissed as an isolated case, with the administration targeting a one-time Democratic congressional candidate who had slammed President Trump on the campaign trail.

But in the days since, it’s become clear the dismissal is part of a broader campaign against Trump’s perceived enemies that has roiled the Justice Department and some of the nation’s highest-powered law firms.

Last Friday, the White House terminated Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney on the corporate and securities fraud strike force who had been leading an investigation into a pro-Trump business executive. After The Times reported on the matter, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement that said the Justice Department had eliminated at least 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies nationwide in the past few weeks.

“The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt did not explain how those fired were allegedly subverting democracy, and White House officials didn’t respond to requests for more information.

Trump has authority over federal prosecutors because U.S. attorney’s offices are part of the Department of Justice, which falls under the executive branch, not the judicial branch. While it is normal for U.S. attorneys, who are political appointees, to resign or be forced out when a new administration takes power, several lawyers said line prosecutors like Schleifer are career employees who can only be terminated for poor performance or misconduct.

By firing an individual prosecutor with an email that sources said was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” the White House took a norm-shattering step that might be illegal and could cripple the independence of individual prosecutors throughout the Department of Justice if repeated, according to several current and former prosecutors. The sources familiar with Schleifer’s firing, along with several others who spoke to The Times, requested anonymity citing concerns about backlash.

The White House and U.S. Department of Justice have not said exactly why Schleifer was fired. Both Schleifer and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.

Multiple federal law enforcement sources said they suspect Schleifer’s firing was tied to critical comments he made about Trump during his congressional campaign and his prosecution of a fast-food CEO who donated roughly $40,000 to Trump and Republican causes in recent years.

Connie Woodhead, a 30-year veteran of the Department of Justice and former first assistant U.S. attorney in the office where Schleifer worked, called the circumstances of his departure “unprecedented.”

“I think it’s extremely chilling… especially without further explanation, for any assistant U.S. attorney charging anyone who might be a friend of the [Trump] administration, or a donor to the administration,” she said.

Trump’s team has made no secret of his intention to rid the government of employees who have challenged the president or his allies and their interests. An hour before Schleifer was fired, Laura Loomer, who has at times served as an advisor to Trump, began calling for his ouster on social media. Loomer later celebrated the firing on X on Saturday, stating that “Biden holdovers who openly express bias against President Trump” should all be fired.

The job of assistant U.S. attorney is not typically glamorous, involving the mundane but crucial legal grunt work of prosecuting all manner of federal crimes, ranging from white-collar scams to international narcotics conspiracies and public corruption. It has been a career launching point for many prominent legal figures, with major law firms frequently poaching the top talent. Retaining the best prosecutors, whose casework is largely apolitical, has been a longstanding challenge for the government.

Several former federal prosecutors said the firing of an assistant U.S. attorney would normally be a laborious process that involves the employee’s supervisor and higher-ups at their district office. A prosecutor might be put on a “performance improvement plan,” for instance, before termination was even considered.

“Career prosecutors who are past their probationary status have public service protections. That ordinarily means that before one of them could get fired, there would be a long, well-documented process,” said Carley Palmer, a former supervisor in the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles who is now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP. “To fire someone who is past their probationary period is hard to do.”

Multiple sources told The Times over the weekend that Joseph T. McNally, the acting U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, was not involved in the decision to terminate Schleifer. The sources, who were not authorized publicly and feared reprisals, suspected Schleifer’s firing was motivated, in part, by a case he was assigned involving Andrew Wiederhorn, former chief executive of the company that owns fast-food chains Fatburger and Johnny Rockets.

A grand jury indicted Wiederhorn last May on charges that he hid taxable income from the federal government by disbursing “shareholder loans” from the company to himself and his family, money which was then used for personal gain. He has pleaded not guilty.

Wiederhorn’s lawyers have aggressively pushed Justice Department officials to drop the case, according to two sources. The case against Wiederhorn, who donated approximately $40,000 to Trump’s political action committees and the Republican National Committee in the last two years, is still pending in federal court. The defense team did not respond to a request for comment following Schleifer’s dismissal.

Beyond the Wiederhorn case, there are also concerns that Schleifer was targeted for political reasons. Schleifer made several unflattering remarks about Trump when he ran for an open congressional seat in New York’s 17th District in 2020. In one 2020 tweet, Schleifer accused Trump of eroding constitutional integrity “every day with every lie and every act of heedless, narcissistic corruption.”

One of Schleifer’s former colleagues said that despite his political ambitions outside the office, he focused only on the law when he came to work.

“He is very smart. He’s hardworking. And he is impartial. He judges cases based on the evidence,” Woodhead said. “He was apolitical in the office.”

Schleifer left his post during his 2020 political campaign but was hired back to the office ahead of Biden’s inauguration in 2021 by former U.S. Atty. Nicola Hanna, a Trump appointee. Hanna is now part of Wiederhorn’s defense team. None of Wiederhorn’s attorneys have responded to requests for comment from The Times.

Schleifer’s firing appears to be just the latest case roiling the Justice Department.

Reagan Fondren, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, was also fired recently in a one-line email from the White House, according to the Daily Memphian. Fondren could not immediately be reached for comment.

Adam Cohen, director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, wrote last month on LinkedIn that he was abruptly fired after more than 26 years pursuing “old school mobsters, street gang members, cartel bosses, terrorists” and others for the Justice Department in Washington.

“Putting bad guys in jail was as apolitical as it gets,” Cohen wrote. “I served under five Presidents and 11 Attorneys General… my personal politics were never relevant.”

In January, more than a dozen prosecutors were fired after working on criminal cases against Trump. That included Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the Major Frauds Section of the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A.

Bernstein had previously aided special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving office and fostered an insurrection with lies about the results of the 2020 election. Bernstein declined an interview request.

The special counsel prosecutors each received a letter from the Justice Department stating that given their “significant role” in prosecuting Trump, “I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

Those attorneys have since retained counsel and challenged the legality of the firings through an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which bills itself as an independent, quasi-judicial agency in the executive branch. Palmer said if the board doesn’t overturn Schleifer and Bernstein’s firings, they will likely have to sue in federal court to get their jobs back.

Jack Smith was among hundreds of former Justice Department lawyers who signed a February open letter to career federal prosecutors that expressed “alarm” over recent actions by the department’s leadership. The letter followed the Justice Department’s order to dismiss corruption charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, despite high-level prosecutors from both ends of the political spectrum resigning in protest of that order.

“We were taught to pursue justice without fear or favor, and knew our decisions to investigate and charge should be based only on the facts and the law,” the letter stated. “We knew these values were more than just requirements in a manual — they were foundational to a fair and just legal system. And we upheld them no matter who was President.”

Current and former federal prosecutors have raised concerns over the ability of fired federal prosecutors to find work in the private sector after Trump issued several executive orders targeting firms who had ties to some of his political enemies, including ex-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 election.

Although district court judges have ruled some of the Trump orders targeting law firms are likely unconstitutional, some firms have sought to appease him.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP — which has a partner that once tried to build a criminal case against Trump while working at the Manhattan district attorney’s office — agreed to contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Trump supports, including “the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.”

The firm, which reportedly employs about 2,000 people, also agreed to audit its hiring practices and pledged to “not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.”

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California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants designed to make states more resilient to infectious disease, and accused the administration of overreaching its authority by clawing back funding already allocated by Congress.

The pullback in funding is a devastating hit to local health departments, many of whom are dealing with large and novel outbreaks ranging from COVID-19 to bird flu and measles. Agencies in California alone stand to lose nearly $1 billion.

“Congress explicitly authorized funding for the grants at issue to help keep our country healthy and protect us from future pandemics,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “cannot unilaterally do away with that critical federal funding.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month notified health agencies in all 50 states — including the California Department of Public Health — that it was suspending more than $11 billion in grants it had previously provided to support state infectious disease responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic has subsided, the states have continued using the funding for a range of infectious disease initiatives.

The lawsuit, filed against Kennedy and the Health and Human Services Department in federal court in Rhode Island by California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia, is the latest in a string of litigation filed by Democratic-led states against the administration amid a wave of policy enactments and other funding cuts that Trump has attempted to initiate through executive orders and other White House dictates since taking office in January.

Several of the states’ prior lawsuits have also alleged that Trump is illegally seizing funding powers that belong to Congress, and not to the executive branch. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges the Trump administration is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately restore the public health funding to its previously allocated levels.

Bonta’s office said the cuts — which include $972 million in funds for California — would cause “irreparable harm” to the states if allowed to stand.

It said the California Department of Public Health would lose $800 million that it planned to use in part to vaccinate 4.5 million children and improve logistical preparation for directing sick and injured patients from hospitals to other available health facilities during emergencies.

The office said the California Department of Health Care Services would lose $119 million that it intended to use for substance use prevention and other early intervention health services for youth across the state. It also said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health would lose $45 million that it intended to use in part to prevent the spread of measles and bird flu.

A spokeswoman for the county said the funding cuts would eliminate staff that work to mitigate disease spread in homeless shelters, schools, jails and worksites; curtail work by the county mobile infectious disease team to provide vaccines and other healthcare to homebound residents, seniors at housing developments, senior centers and others confined to living facilities; and forestall upgrades to county data systems and other infrastructure needed to track infectious diseases and share timely outbreak information with the public.

Some of those system upgrades are already underway, meaning cutting the funding now will waste past investments, in addition to increasing the likelihood of system failures during emergencies, the spokeswoman said.

The CDC funding cuts are part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration and Trump’s “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk to radically reduce federal spending, in part to pay for tax cuts that critics allege will disproportionately benefit the rich.

Musk, the world’s richest man, and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government department, have been granted access to sensitive government facilities, computer networks and other data and have been empowered to slash away at government budgets — which California is also suing over.

The CDC cuts are not the first to public health. Kennedy also has announced plans to reduce the health department workforce by some 20,000 employees, and the Trump administration reportedly intends to close various Health and Human Services buildings — including in California.

On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement denouncing what she called a “reported decision to close” a Health and Human Services regional office in San Francisco by Kennedy, whom she called “the Trump administration’s leading vaccine denialist” — a nod to his past adoption of vaccine pseudoscience that medical experts have widely rejected and criticized.

“By closing our regional office, the Trump Administration would choose to put the health and safety of Bay Area residents and all Californians in jeopardy, gut vital public health initiatives like the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and potentially axe hundreds of career civil servant jobs held by hardworking Californians,” Pelosi said.

She said Kennedy’s “extreme views on public health are out of step with the vast majority of the American people,” that the “shortsighted” closure would “directly harm our most vulnerable communities and make America sicker,” and that she and others would be fighting the closure and other cuts to public health.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is the ninth that Bonta’s office has filed against the current Trump administration. It has also filed its support for litigants against the administration in at least a half-dozen other cases.

California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed while working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined. The virus has also infected 758 dairy herds — or more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.

There have been eight measles cases in California since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and other respiratory virus cases.

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I see many articles claiming Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a referendum on the MAGA cult and Donald Trump, but they downplay the obvious. Will the public allow the richest man in the world and his wealth to determine US elections?

The AP: “Majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be decided Tuesday in a race that broke records for spending and has become a proxy battle for the nation’s political fights, pitting a candidate backed by President Donald Trump against a Democratic-aligned challenger.”

Washington Post: Wisconsin Supreme Court race is MAGA movement’s first test since Trump win

Early in any new presidential administration, the winner would likely have an advantage in this type of special election. Since Wisconsin is always very close, it would tip in Trump’s direction.

However, having Elon Musk hand out millions of dollars to people at his rallies and paying for incredible publicity is more about his effect on US Democracy. Yes, democrats have poured in heavy resources too, but not in the history of this country have we seen a man like Musk try and dictate how we live.

No individual has ever poured in $277 million to turn a presidential election to his preferred candidate like Musk did in 2024. The courts should rule this illegal electioneering and put a halt to it.

What Musk is doing is threatening all politicians that if they oppose his draconian DOGE operations, and plans to take over federal agencies for himself, he will spend millions to defeat them in upcoming elections.

Wisconsin, do not let that happen.

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Maria Bartiromo and Senator Roger Marshall repeated already-debunked claims about supposed fraud and abuse in Social Security by upping the ante Monday morning.

Fox Business played some video of Musk claiming they won’t cut Medicaid, or Social Security to fool the rubes.

MUSK: 40% of the of the calls into social security were fraudulent like meaning that it was someone trying to get a social security payment that was going to a senior to go to a instead to go to a fraud ring.

How does he know?

The Queen of MAGA said some of those people that are 120 years old must be receiving funds. or at least it’s possible. The truth never stops Bartiromo and the MAGA cult from transmitting lie after lie. No person not entitled to benefits has been receiving them at 120 years old.

Bartiromo’s job is to promote Musk as a savior as opposed to the villain he is.

BARTIROMO: Incredible, Senator. I mean you know hearing that interview with Bret Baier the other day from the Doge Group and Elon Musk was just astounding some of the things that they they found.

We don’t know if all of those people on the Social Security rolls that are 120 years old we don’t know if they’ve actually accepted those benefits right but we know that they’re on the roll so it’s there’s a chance that they’ve been collecting benefits.

Somebody has been because we know they’re not 120 years old but somebody is collecting them.

Nobody is collecting money who is 120 years old, but even if a small percentage were, it gives Musk no cause to fire thousands of SSA employees and close phone banks and offices. Hoping to find fraud this way is ludicrous, Maria.

Marshall then regurgitated Elon Musk’s lies about Social Security.

We don’t know if all of those people on the Social Security rolls that are 120 years old we don’t know if they’ve actually accepted those benefits right but we know that they’re on the roll so it’s there’s a chance that they’ve been collecting benefits.

Somebody has been because we know they’re not 120 years old but somebody is collecting them.

Right Maria so I came to Congress to save Social Security.

President Trump wants to save Social Security.

We want those monies to go to those people that again have been paying into the program for decades.

What we do know is that 40% of those phone calls coming into the Social Security hotline are people trying to change the account where that money is being sent to.

I don’t know the success level of those.

I’m not sure the percentage of out of country but what we do know from past experience if you go back to the unemployment crisis that we had during the pandemic that lots of those monies were sent out of the country as well so we’re gonna work on that I think that’s a huge priority.

Even if Marshall was correct about the phone calls, (which he is not) that proves nothing. People change their bank accounts all the time. Elderly people use the phone to do as much as they can, because they are often not well-versed in online transactions. There’s no reason to suspect that they’re fraudsters, like Elon and his co-president Trump are.

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During her hit on Fox Business Network Monday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce ignored Trump’s military threats to acquire Greenland, claiming instead the US only wants to protect them from foreign threats.
.
When has Greenland been threatened?

Oh, wait. The U.S. just did.

VARNEY: Now this, President Trump did not rule out using military force to acquire Greenland from Denmark.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce joins me now. Tammy, how far will Mr. Trump go to control Greenland?

BRUCE: Well, you know, this is not, and good morning, Stu, nice to see you.

This is not about control, this is about the safety and security of Greenland. Certainly the President’s concerned, as all of us are, as is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, concerned about the safety and security of the United States.

And Greenland’s position clearly indicates that they’re in a strategic position that matters to the whole world, to say the least. And at the same time, I think we know that, as the President has said often, as the Secretary of State has noted, that Greenland, we care about Greenland’s security. We know that, of course, its future is in the hands of Greenlanders.

But the fact is, is that they are in a very important position, and we understand that for them it’s important safety and security, especially as China and Russia are looking to have more influence and more investment in that area.

And that’s not good, of course, for the safety or prosperity of the United States, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be so for Greenlanders either.

The former Fox News employee conveniently ignores Stuart Varney’s question asking how far Trump will go using the military to take over Greenland and instead lied that Demented Donald cares deeply for Greenlanders.

What a crock of shite. Trump is the one threatening the sovereignty of Greenland. The only one.

The dutiful Varney didn’t bother with a follow-up question, instead pretending Trump is angry with Putin. He’s not.

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The DOGE-affiliated acting president of the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally funded, independent think tank, has moved to transfer the agency’s $500 million headquarters building to the General Services Administration free of charge, according to court documents revealed in a recently filed lawsuit. Via Wired:

Tensions at USIP have been escalating for weeks, starting when the Trump administration fired the agency’s 10 voting board members on March 14 and USIP staffers denied DOGE representatives access at the front door. Three days later, DOGE employees made their way into the building, reportedly using a physical key from a former security contractor. The dramatic confrontations culminated in a full takeover, with former State Department official Kenneth Jackson assuming the role of president. As of this past Friday, most USIP staffers have received termination notices.

Former USIP officials have since filed a lawsuit against Jackson, DOGE, Donald Trump, and other members of the Trump administration, seeking an immediate intervention “to stop Defendants from completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute,” according to the complaint. While US district judge Beryl Howell declined the USIP request for a temporary restraining order that would reinstate the institute’s board on March 19, she sharply criticized DOGE’s conquest in court.

Court documents filed by defendants on Monday reveal the next phase of DOGE’s plans for USIP. As of March 25, DOGE staffer Nate Cavanaugh—formerly installed at GSA—has replaced Jackson as the institute’s acting president, the documents show. They further state that Cavanaugh has been instructed to transfer USIP’s assets—including its real estate—to the GSA. The letter detailing those changes and instructions was signed by secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and secretary of state Marco Rubio.

[…] In a separate undated letter, which was also included in the batch of documents filed with the court, Cavanaugh writes to GSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian: “I have concluded that it is in the best interest of USIP, the federal government, and the United States for USIP to transfer its real property located at 2301 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C. 20037, to GSA and to seek an exception from the 100 percent reimbursement requirement for the building.”

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The Trump administration admitted that it had deported a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly sent him to an El Salvador mega prison. However, the administration said U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return.

“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador,” a top ICE official wrote in a statement to a federal judge.

Politico reports:

He was arrested by ICE on March 12 and sent to El Salvador on March 15, where his wife recognized him in a video showing the shackled and shaven prisoners being arrayed by Salvadoran authorities.

The Trump administration now says there’s nothing it can do to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to U.S. custody. The Justice Department is urging a federal judge to reject a petition by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys to seek his return to United States custody, saying the Trump administration has no power to force El Salvador to facilitate that demand — and that the courts have no authority to issue such an order.

JD Vance doubled down, saying it’s “gross to get fired up” over this. He falsely wrote on Xitter that Garcia is “a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.”

The issue is not whether Abrego Garcia was removable — it’s that the court agreed he shouldn’t be sent to El Salvador. The administration has scoffed at the notion there have been errors in March 15 flight determinations. But here they acknowledge one.https://t.co/Zpi181RT9X pic.twitter.com/TdDaSEmBvY

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 1, 2025

Your comment, @JDVance, is a lie.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 1, 2025

So, the Trump administration admits it was an “error,” but Vance is still running with the lie. This further proves why due process is vital.

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When she was working as an election official in Arizona years ago, Tammy Patrick encountered voters who supported what was then the state’s new “proof of citizenship” law for voter registration — only to realize that they weren’t able to vote. Via Huffington Post:

“They’d say, ‘I voted for that!’” she recalled of the voters, many of whom were “snowbirds, older people, who didn’t have the wherewithal to get [the correct documents] because the documents didn’t exist anymore.”

“It was heart-wrenching,” Patrick said.

At the time, Arizona was the only state in the nation with a documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voters, and thousands of people have since lost out on the right to vote in state elections. Kansas, which later also tried its own citizenship requirement for voter registration, saw similar results.

I wonder how many people know that Republicans and their tech donors want to keep women from voting — because women lean stubbornly liberal? In Peter Theil’s essay, “The Education of A Libertarian,” he wrote:

…The great task facing the world was “to find an escape from politics in all its forms.” For Thiel, that doesn’t just mean bad government — it means any government, even the democratic kind. He blamed what he viewed as the sorry state of things on two culprits — “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries” and “the extension of the franchise to women.” The growing ranks of poor and female voters, he lamented, had made it virtually impossible for libertarians to prevail at the ballot box. The solution? Reject the “unthinking demos” and create a world “not bounded by historical nation-states.”

Thiel has put his billions behind that philosophy, and his mentees include JD Vance, who he introduced to Trump at Mar-A-Lago. He worked closely with Musk at Paypal, and several of his network are now working at the White House.

Remember when you’d read about libertarians, roll your eyes and say, “Thank God no one ever votes for them”? They’re running the White House now. It’s why DOGE is leaving chaos in its wake.

But two efforts, one each from the White House and congressional Republicans, have made the prospect of a national proof of citizenship requirement a real possibility.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed the executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” In addition to ordering a slew of changes to voting machine standards and information-sharing arrangements between the federal and state governments, the order ― which is not a law ― instructs the Election Assistance Commission to change its national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship.

In Congress, the so-called SAVE Act would similarly mandate proof of citizenship documents. The bill passed the House last year and is scheduled for a vote in the House this week, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).