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The Trump administration, tired of having many of his executive orders being put on hold by federal courts because of their illegality, just arrested the circuit court judge in Milwaukee County, Hannah Dugan, for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom.

Kash Patel tweeted out the arrest and then deleted it, but others are reporting it.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: “Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse and is in federal custody.”

C&L’s resident Wisconsin expert Chris Capper Liebenthal weighs in: “What it sounds like is that Dugan directed the undocumented and his lawyer to a room outside the courtroom so they could discuss the case and the situation. The FBI is pissed because she didn’t restrain him for them.”

The Trump administration is trying to intimidate the judicial branch of government because so many of his executive orders fly in the face of the US Constitution.

Trump wants to rule as a despot.

The rule of law revolts.

The Trump response is to arrest a judge.

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Republican Congressman Keith Self tried to defend Medicaid cuts in the House by lying and saying Medicaid recipients are deadbeats.

Most Medicaid recipients are working, but don’t make enough money to pay for healthcare for them and their families.

Berating Medicaid recipients is cruel and an unjust punishment coming from rich scumbags in Congress and their wealthy media enablers that want to reward themselves with tax cuts while sacrificing healthcare for the working class.

Rep. Self aired his lying remarks on Fox Business.

SELF: Let’s just take Medicaid.

If we can get able-bodied adults who can work, who should work, who need to contribute to the economy off of Medicaid and let Medicaid be spent on the people that it is meant for—pregnant women, young, elderly, disabled—that would clean up the program—fraud, waste and abuse, probably waste.

I’m not sure there’s—there’s certainly fraud, but this is simply waste in the program.

We’re not reshaping it.

No one would lose benefits who should be on the program.

Right.

And importantly, when they use scare tactics to say we’re cutting benefits, we’re only trying to get able-bodied adults working.

Yeah.

HOST: And should is the operative word there because the program has been expanded and many people who should not be on it are on it, and that’s a huge problem.

Let’s see what fucking liars these two are

This is from the Medicaid website:

Low-income families, qualified pregnant women and children, and individuals receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are examples of mandatory eligibility groups.

The Affordable Care Act established a new methodology for determining income eligibility for Medicaid, which is based on Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI). MAGI is used to determine financial eligibility for Medicaid, CHIP, and premium tax credits and cost sharing reductions available through the health insurance marketplace. By using one set of income counting rules and a single application across programs, the Affordable Care Act made it easier for people to apply and enroll in the appropriate program.

MAGI is the basis for determining Medicaid income eligibility for most children, pregnant women, parents, and adults. The MAGI-based methodology considers taxable income and tax filing relationships to determine financial eligibility for Medicaid.

The amount of fraud they would need to find is unimaginable ant not in our reality.

It’s a scam.

Even if Republicans disagree with Medicaid’s requirements had a chance under Trump’s first term to do something about it and they did nothing.

They need to destroy working class families to serve the millionaire class.

Crooks, liars, cheats and criminals are now in charge of these programs.

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Donald Trump had a bad day in court, which means it was a good day for us. He had to take three losses in 90 minutes. That’s got to suck, huh?

The Independent reports:

First, Trump’s executive orders targeting so-called “sanctuary cities” were deemed unconstitutional attempts to “coerce” local officials into enforcing the president’s immigration policies.

Next, the president’s attempts to withhold federal funding from schools that engage with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were labeled “textbook viewpoint discrimination” that likely violate the First Amendment.

And another judge blocked parts of the president’s sweeping executive order targeting election administration and voting rights, including a requirement that voter registration forms ask for proof of citizenship.

That’s a shame. I’m all broken up about that. I know you are, too.

Trump keeps signing unconstitutional executive orders. It’s almost as if he doesn’t have a competent cabinet and aides to advise him. It’s amateur hour at the White House every single day, 24/7.

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The official Trump store is now selling red “Trump 2028” hats for $50 amid repeated trial balloons by Yambo and his minions that he could run for a third term in 2028. What a pathetic loser, especially when he’s already made such a failure out of his current term. Via Newsweek:

The president has said in recent weeks that he is not joking about pursuing a third term.

The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

In March, Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker he was “not joking” about considering a third term, adding that there were “methods which you could do it.”

Trump said one such method could involve having Vice President JD Vance lead the Republican ticket in 2028, with Trump as his running mate. Vance could then resign once in office in 2029, allowing Trump to assume the presidency for a third time.

Yeah, well, according to the 12th Amendment, anyone who’s ineligible to serve as president is barred from serving as vice-president, too. You want to try, Yambo? We’re ready to fight.

https://bsky.app/profile/artcandee.bsky.social/post/3lnlbcgokf225

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When Conover Kennard wrote about Fiore’s conviction on all seven counts of her federal fraud case (each of which could lead to 20 years in prison), we learned that Fiore spent the money donors thought would go to the memorial on “rent, plastic surgery, and her daughter’s wedding.” She was a “major client” at the plastic surgeon’s facility, Kennard noted.

As Ed Scarce commented when Fiore was indicted, “Next to stealing from charities for widows and orphans, stealing from a charity designed to honour fallen police officers has to be pretty high on the list of repugnant crimes of this type.”

Not if you’re a member of MAGA World! Defrauding charities is almost a badge of honor for that crowd. Just ask Steve Bannon, pardoned after defrauding donors to a charity to build the border wall. Heck, defrauding charities is a Trump family tradition! Eric Trump found a way to make a tidy sum from his kids-cancer charity and his felonious father, Donald Trump, was forced to shut down his scammy foundation altogether.

So, as shocking as it is, it’s not a huge surprise that Trump pardoned Fiore.

From The Nevada Independent:

The pardon comes just six days after a federal judge denied Fiore’s requests for an acquittal and new trial. Fiore had argued the evidence against her was insufficient and that she was denied the right to a fair trial, but Judge Jennifer Dorsey was unconvinced.

Notably, it also comes shortly after Trump named Sigal Chattah as the Interim U.S. Attorney for Nevada, which is the state’s top federal law enforcement officer, whose office is in charge of trying cases such as Fiore’s. Chattah, who also serves as the state’s Republican National Committeewoman, is friends with Fiore.

Also not surprising is that Cliven Bundy-pal Fiore seems like the kind of person only a fellow fraudster could cheer for. The Independent reports that she resigned her position as the Las Vegas City Council’s mayor pro tempore after she allegedly said, “‘If there’s a job opening and my white ass is more qualified than somebody’s black ass, then my white ass should get the job,’ though Fiore denied that being the reason for her resignation.” She was also sued by a colleague for allegedly creating a hostile workplace and physically attacking her, according to The Independent.

Nevertheless, Fiore was appointed as a justice of the peace before being suspended after her indictment. The Independent said she plans to return to that job next week.

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I had the pleasure of joining Jim Acosta on his new show on Substack on Tuesday, a platform where I’m increasingly active. We got right to the point—our politics today isn’t some policy disagreement or polite exchange of ideas with the GOP, it’s a hostage situation w/ Marjorie Taylor Greene duct-taping our country’s future to a flagpole while Trump cheers from the golf course (while kicking his ball forward every other shot).

We talked about the raw danger of Trump’s increasingly fascistic rhetoric, the cowardice of House Republicans afraid of their own base, and how Democrats finally seem to be waking up and swinging back, even though it took way too long (I’m looking at you, Merrick f-ing Garland). B/c when the other side is trying to burn the house down, it’s not “partisanship” to grab a hose, it’s survival.

Jim gets it. He always did, which is why CNN couldn’t keep him on air except in that new 2:45 am slot they offered him. Having him still on air on a hugely growing app (Substack, my friends, is the infrastructure liberal billionaires never built for us) is crucial. B/c if this election’s the final exam for our democracy, we better start studying like our lives depend on it—and perhaps even kick the exam a few times.

*I remind you often of the importance of indy media. It’s most often about my YouTube channel. So, yes, please first watch the video! But, after, SUBSCRIBE to my Blue Amp Substack, where we have 590,000+ subs and are putting together infrastructure to compete with the garbage on The Right. Help us continue that fight.

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It’s showtime for Hollywood at the California Capitol.

The state’s entertainment industry has spent months begging for help from Sacramento to stem the decline of film and TV production and save thousands of jobs.

This week, after months of speeches and promises from public officials, two bills meant to boost the beleaguered business cleared their first legislative hurdles.

The bills are intended to make California’s film and TV production incentive more competitive with other states and countries by increasing the tax credit up to 35% of qualified expenditures and expanding the types of productions that would be eligible.

It’s a potential lifeline for the entertainment industry, which has been battered in recent years by production slowdowns wrought by the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, a pullback in spending by the studios, the recent Southern California wildfires and productions fleeing the Golden State.

“We don’t want to become the car industry in Detroit or aerospace in California,” said Rebecca Rhine, president of the Entertainment Union Coalition and Western executive director of the Directors Guild of America. “When our industry thrives, we think California thrives.”

The bills won unanimous votes out of the state Senate revenue and taxation committee and the Assembly arts and entertainment committee.

But despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial call last year to more than double the money allocated to the state’s film and TV tax credit program, passage of the two bills is far from a done deal.

Critics have been skeptical of the film and TV tax credit program since it was introduced in 2009 under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some say the tax credits are corporate giveaways and don’t deliver as much economic value as proponents claim.

“The economy does best when government doesn’t pick winners and losers,” said Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow of business and economics at Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank that advocates for free markets. “This is not the right way to get a pro-growth fiscal business environment that accelerates job growth.”

Additionally, California now faces a difficult economic outlook, as officials brace for potential cuts in federal funding, as well as tariff-related pressures on state revenues and stock market volatility that could reduce tax collections that fund state programs.

That all forces difficult questions for legislators about which priorities to fund.

In a recent post on X, Assemblymember Corey Jackson said Democratic voters in California “should be outraged that we aren’t spending more on housing, allowing seniors to fall into homelessness, and allowing so many children to live in poverty. For corporate and movie studio tax breaks.”

Reached by phone, Jackson said that while expanding film and TV tax credits is a worthy policy, state lawmakers must consider what they’d have to sacrifice for them, particularly as the state budget is under stress.

“If we were back in the period where we have more money than we can spend, this would be a no-brainer,” Jackson said. “But it’s time to bring people back to reality. This should not just be a slam-dunk to people.”

Hollywood workers argue that an expanded film and TV tax credit would generate economic returns beyond the industry, with ripple effects touching tourism as well as small businesses such as dry cleaners, florists and caterers that rely on entertainment spending. And after years of struggles, workers say the industry is at an inflection point.

That has led to a major lobbying effort on Hollywood’s part.

More than 100,000 letters have been sent to individual state lawmakers in support of the bills, with an additional 22,000 letters sent to the Senate revenue and taxation committee.

Dozens of representatives from all of the major entertainment industry unions trekked to Sacramento to support the legislation, as did studio executives, their lobbyists and the Motion Picture Assn. trade group.

It’s the kind of show of force State Sen. Ben Allen and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, two of the bills’ co-sponsors, had called for when they spoke to a crowd last week at Burbank’s Evergreen Studios recording facility and urged entertainment workers to contact their representatives.

“It’s going to be a fight to get this done because of the headwinds,” Allen told the crowd, noting that there are many competing priorities at the state level. Just the mention of the legislation was enough to elicit applause and cheers from the audience.

Industry insiders and lawmakers, including at the Burbank town hall, have tried to fend off criticism that this is a gift to corporations.

They described them as jobs bills that will reward the productions that generate the most employment and will not allow companies to use the tax credits until after production has wrapped.

California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. Production companies can apply the credit toward any tax liabilities they have in California. Raising the credit to 35% is significant, supporters say. Projects that shoot elsewhere in the state could get a credit of 40%.

The legislation also would expand the types of productions that would qualify, including animated films, shorts and series, along with large-scale competition shows. Independent productions will be allocated 10% of the total amount in the program, up from the current 8%.

“In some respects, the headwinds have actually strengthened the bill,” Allen told The Times. “They’ve forced really careful, intense, thoughtful, targeted conversations and negotiations.”

Outside of Hollywood, the bills have the backing of the California Labor Federation, whose executive council unanimously voted to support the legislation in February, said President Lorena Gonzalez.

Though the organization is not always supportive of tax credits, the federation has always supported the film and TV program, she said.

“The fact is the unique situation with Hollywood being so unionized,” said Gonzalez. “In order to preserve those good union jobs and the middle-class lives that are developed as a result, we’d like to keep those jobs here.”

The lobbying effort has led to unusual alliances, particularly in the wake of the strikes, with both studios and Hollywood unions rallying on the same side. Both groups, however, have worked together on previous film and TV tax credit proposals.

In a letter to the leaders of the Assembly committee on revenue and taxation, Motion Picture Assn. Chief Executive Charles H. Rivkin wrote that the changes to the film and TV tax credit program would “help attract more productions and jobs in California.”

If the bill were enacted, he wrote, the studios will submit more applications to the California Film Commission, “leading to locating more of their productions in California, which will create and retain good jobs for Californians.”

But even within Hollywood’s overall push, there are differing priorities among stakeholders. During the Burbank town hall meeting, postproduction workers and music scoring professionals called for carve-outs, noting that other states and countries now offer specific rebates for this work.

That has led to a steep decline in production for these workers. The average number of booked recording days for a sampling of L.A.’s scoring stages is now 11 days for 2025 so far, a far cry from the average of 127 days for all of 2022 during the peak of the streaming boom, said Peter Rotter, founder of Encompass Music Partners, who helped organize the town hall.

Much scoring work has moved to Europe or even Nashville, while some postproduction work has been diverted to places like Canada and London.

”It’s going to take a village,” Rotter told The Times. “We have one shot at this right now.”

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WASHINGTON — As a couple of key court cases against President Trump’s executive actions intensify, questions of how and whether the White House will follow judges’ orders are mounting.

Already, some judges have issued orders reprimanding the Trump administration and demanding action. But who has the authority to enforce such orders?

Situated at the nexus of the face-off between the executive and judicial branches is a little-scrutinized arm of the federal government: the U.S. Marshals Service.

Who are U.S. marshals?

The U.S. Marshals Service is a federal law enforcement agency. It is tasked with a broad range of actions — hunting fugitives, transporting federal prisoners and managing goods seized from criminals. Oftentimes the Marshals Service will work with state and local law enforcement agencies on particularly difficult cases, such as hunting down a man who escaped a Pennsylvania prison last year.

“People ask us to do jobs they’re not willing to do,” said Barry Lane, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service.

Federal courts also rely on the U.S. Marshals Service to enforce federal orders. Sometimes that means keeping order in a courtroom, said Stephen Monier, a retired former U.S. marshal for the district of New Hampshire.

“The judge can say, get him out of here for being disruptive in the courtroom — which, then, we would be responsible for,” Monier said. “We would remove him from the courthouse.”

The Marshals Service reports to the Department of Justice, which is part of the sprawling federal executive structure. But it serves as the enforcer of federal court orders — occupying an unusual position between the executive and judicial branches.

“Like the director of the FBI, the director of Marshals Service reports to the attorney general of the United States,” Monier said, adding, “but because of our unique role with the court, we are the enforcement arm of the court.”

Another responsibility of the Marshals Service is protecting courthouses and judicial officers. U.S. Marshals have ramped up security efforts in response to an increasing number of threats against judges and court personnel — including creating the Judicial Threat Branch to monitor and respond to high-level incidents. One of the marshals’ responsibilities was providing protective service detail for U.S. District Judges Aileen Cannon and Tanya Chutkan, who ruled in criminal cases against Trump.

“These decisions generated threats directed at the judges that warranted protective service details,” the U.S. Marshals Service’s annual report notes.

Is Trump following court orders?

Trump has repeatedly said he will follow court orders, and White House officials have said they are following the letter of the law in the myriad cases brought against the administration since he took office. So far, the Supreme Court has issued limited rulings affecting the White House. Last weekend, the justices temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out deportations of Venezuelan men deemed foreign gang members.

“We are obviously complying with the court’s order,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. “However, it was a temporary pause. The Supreme Court basically said, sit tight and they will follow up with an order, and we’re confident that the Supreme Court will rule on the side of law and recognize the president absolutely has the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our nation’s interior under the Alien Enemies Act.”

But Trump has already lashed out at other federal court judges who’ve ruled against his administration over their efforts to deport immigrants — including U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who threatened to hold White House officials in contempt of court for not following his earlier orders to stop a plane carrying deportees to an El Salvador prison midflight.

Boasberg said last week that he found probable cause for putting administration officials in criminal contempt for not turning the planes around.

What does being held in contempt of court mean?

Being held in criminal contempt of court means defying a judge’s orders.

Boasberg said that Trump administration officials violated his orders by not stopping a plane carrying deportees to El Salvador. He warned that he could refer the matter for prosecution — where Department of Justice officials would have to decide whether to take up the case. If they decline to do so, Boasberg said, he would appoint a private attorney to prosecute the case against the administration and specific officials.

Holding a defendant — never mind a government official — in criminal contempt is rare.

“It would be very unusual in my experience,” Monier said.

In another case, the Supreme Court said the administration had a duty to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man the Trump administration said it had mistakenly deported to that country.

But Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis condemned the government’s lawyers for defying the court’s order, saying their “objection reflects a willful and bad faith refusal to comply.”

Have U.S. marshals said they would enforce an order against the Trump administration?

No. The U.S. Marshals spokesperson declined to comment for this article and referred The Times to its annual report.

The U.S. Marshals Service is also without a permanent director, since Gadyaces Serralta, whom Trump appointed last month, has yet to be confirmed.

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WASHINGTON — President Trump has pressed for quickly deporting hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran men who are said to belong to a foreign crime gang.

Those deportations have been challenged as illegal — and last week, blocked by the Supreme Court — if the detained men are not given a hearing to argue they are not gang members.

But Trump’s deportations are unusual and may face a legal challenge for a different reason. Most of the deported men will not be sent back to their home country but instead to a maximum security prison in El Salvador where they can be held indefinitely.

Sending someone to prison “constitutes punishment,” says UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham. Before imprisoning people, including noncitizens, the government is required under the Constitution to charge the defendants with a crime and to prove their guilt in a jury trial, he said.

The unusual mix of civil deportation and criminal-style punishment has received relatively little attention, he said.

Last week, however, he filed an appeal on behalf of a Venezuelan man held in Texas, arguing that it would be unconstitutional for the government to send his client to a brutal prison.

“There should be no serious dispute that sending someone to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, constitutes punishment,” he said in the case of Matos vs. Venegas. “CECOT is not a civil detention center, but instead a maximum security prison in El Salvador. The inhumane conditions there have been well-documented. Detainees share communal cells that can hold up to 100 men where they spend 23.5 hours per day; the cells contain no furniture beyond rows of stacked metal bunks without mattresses or pillows; the lights are always on; and detainees have no access to visits or phone calls with lawyers, family, or community. Indeed, the conditions are so harsh that El Salvador’s own justice minister has said the only way out is in a coffin.”

In defense of its deportations, Trump administration lawyers have pointed to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and said it gave the president wartime powers to quickly deport foreigners.

But administration officials also described the prison as imposing punishment on criminals. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said El Salvador had agreed to “accept for deportation any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal from any nationality.”

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sounded the same theme, saying “we are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison in exchange for a fee.”

Lawyers and family members say many of the deported Venezuelan men had no criminal records but were taken into custody because of their tattoos. They are now in a foreign prison with no rights to appeal or plead their innocence.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager and has lived for 15 years in Maryland, where he has no criminal record. Administration officials allege he was a member of MS-13, a Salvadoran crime gang, which he denies.

Although being a member of foreign crime gang can be grounds for deportation, it is not a crime in itself that would authorize sending Abrego Garcia to state or federal prison in the United States. But because of an “administrative error” by Trump officials, he remains in prison in El Salvador.

In the past, the Supreme Court has made clear that during wartime the government can detain indefinitely people who were picked up on the battlefield. The George W. Bush administration relied on this authority to hold detainees at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

County jails also may hold persons who have been charged with a crime while they await a trial. But it is generally understood people cannot be punished and sent to a prison unless they have been convicted of a crime.

Writing in Lawfare this week, Benjamin Wittes also questioned the legal basis for the reliance on the Salvadoran prison.

“What law lets the Trump administration store Venezuelans in Salvadoran prisons?” asked Wittes, who is editor in chief of the Lawfare site. “By what authority can the U.S. government pay a foreign government to lock up for the long term people who were detained in the United States on the basis of no allegation of criminal misconduct?”

He said it is “only a matter of time before the courts confront the question of what being on one of those flights really means. … I would hope there are not five justices who will vote for the proposition that the United States government can knowingly and intentionally deport a person to face such lawless imprisonment.”

Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA Law School, said the judge may decide the Matos case without ruling on the constitutional challenge to sending deported men to a foreign prison. But he wrote about the case Tuesday on the Just Security site to draw attention to the significant constitutional issue.

“The three men I have represented in habeas litigation were all scared to return to Venezuela,” he wrote, “but they were absolutely terrified of being sent to CECOT. They firmly believed, for good reasons, that there would be no coming back from that place.”