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      US judge hears if Trump team broke law during LA Ice protests

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      A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday began hearing evidence and arguments on whether the Trump administration violated federal law when it deployed national guard soldiers and US marines to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids this summer.The Trump administration federalized California national guard members and sent them to the second-largest US city over the objections of the California governor, Gavin Newsom, and city leaders, after protests erupted on 7 June when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers arrested people at multiple locations.California is asking Judge Charles Breyer to order the Trump administration to return control of the remaining troops to the state and to stop the federal government from using military troops in California “to execute or assist in the execution of federal law or any civilian law enforcement functions by any federal agent or officer”.“The factual question which the court must address is whether the military was used to enforce domestic law, and if so, whether there continues to be a threat that it could be done again,” Breyer said at the start of Monday’s court hearing.The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force. The case could set precedent for how Trump can deploy the guard in the future in California or other states.Trump’s decision to deploy the troops marked the first time in 60 years that a US president had taken such a step without a governor’s consent. Critics say that Trump’s actions in many ways reflect a strongman approach by a president who has continuously tread upon norms and has had a disregard for institutional limits.“This is the first, perhaps, of many,” Trump said in June of the deployment of national guardsmen in Los Angeles. “You know, if we didn’t attack this one very strongly, you’d have them all over the country, but I can inform the rest of the country, that when they do it, if they do it, they’re going to be met with equal or greater force.”Many of the troops have been withdrawn, but Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, said on Sunday that 300 national guard troops remain in the state. The Trump administration last week extended the activation of troops in the LA area through 6 November, according to a court filing by Newsom.“The federal government deployed military troops to the streets of Los Angeles for the purposes of political theater and public intimidation,” Bonta said in a statement. “This dangerous move has no precedent in American history.”The hearing comes the same day Trump placed the DC Metropolitan police department under federal control and deployed the national guard by invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said national guard units would take to the streets of DC over the coming week.The Department of Defense ordered the deployment of roughly 4,000 California national guard troops and 700 marines. Most of the troops have since left but 250 national guard members remain, according to the latest figures provided by the Pentagon. The remaining troops are at the Joint Forces training base in Los Alamitos, according to Newsom.Newsom won an early victory from Breyer, who found the Trump administration had violated the 10th amendment, which defines power between federal and state governments, and exceeded its authority.The Trump administration immediately filed an appeal arguing that courts cannot second guess the president’s decisions and secured a temporary halt from the appeals court, allowing control of the California national guard to stay in federal hands as the lawsuit continues to unfold.After their deployment, the soldiers accompanied federal immigration officers on immigration raids in Los Angeles and at two marijuana farm sites in Ventura county while marines mostly stood guard around a federal building in downtown Los Angeles that includes a detention center at the core of protests.The Trump administration argued the troops were needed to protect federal buildings and personnel in Los Angeles, which has been a battleground in the federal government’s aggressive immigration strategy. Since June, federal agents have rounded up immigrants without legal status to be in the US from Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and farms. Some US citizens have also been detained.Ernesto Santacruz Jr, the field office director for the Department of Homeland Security in Los Angeles, said in court documents that the troops were needed because local law enforcement had been slow to respond when a crowd gathered outside the federal building to protest against the 7 June immigration arrests.“The presence of the national guard and marines has played an essential role in protecting federal property and personnel from the violent mobs,” Santacruz said.After opposition from the Trump administration, Breyer issued an order allowing California’s attorneys to take Santacruz’s deposition. They also took a declaration from a military official on the national guard and marines role in Los Angeles.The Trump administration’s attorneys argued in court filings last week the case should be canceled because the claims under the Posse Comitatus Act “fail as a matter of law”. They argued that there is a law that gives the president the authority to call on the national guard to enforce US laws when federal law enforcement is not enough.Trump federalized members of the California national guard under Section 12406 of Title 10, which allows the president to call the national guard into federal service when the country “is invaded”, when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States”.Breyer found the protests in Los Angeles “fall far short of ‘rebellion”.“Next week’s trial is not cancelled,” he said in a ruling ordering the three-day, non-jury trial.During the month the protests took place, tensions heightened between Trump and Newsom. The California governor compared the president with failed dictators and Trump entertained the idea of having Newsom arrested. More

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      Pam Bondi fired him for prosecuting January 6 rioters. He’d do it again: ‘it’s about justice’

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      When he showed up to work on 27 June, Mike Gordon was having one of the best weeks of his career.Gordon, a federal prosecutor in Tampa, had spent the last month working on a complex case involving allegations that well-known businessman Leo Govoni stole $100m from a fund for children with special needs. That Monday, the US attorney for the middle district of Florida held a press conference announcing an indictment in the case. On Wednesday, Gordon had his semi-annual performance review and received the top rating: outstanding. On Thursday, he appeared on behalf of the government in court and successfully convinced a judge that Govoni should remain in jail until his trial.As the end of the day rolled around on Friday 27 June, Gordon was fired.He wasn’t given a reason for his dismissal. An office assistant simply knocked on his door while he was preparing a witness for trial, and handed him a letter that told him he was being immediately fired “Pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States”, signed by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi. Gordon was told to turn in his devices, pack up his things and leave. The firing was so abrupt he had no chance to hand over his work to colleagues.Even without an official explanation, there was little doubt why he was fired. From 2021 until the end of 2023, Gordon had volunteered for the team prosecuting people involved in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. During his time working in a unit called the Capitol siege section, Gordon became known as one of the most skilled trial litigators and became a kind of coach to other prosecutors as they prepared for trials.But on his first day in office, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon to anyone involved in January 6.“I got fired because I prosecuted people that this administration wanted protected. Bottom line,” Gordon said.Trump has made no secret of his desire to exact revenge on those who investigated and prosecuted him and his allies. Scores of career prosecutors have been fired for getting in the president’s political crosshairs. Gordon’s firing is one of the best examples to date of how Trump is executing that promise and purging the justice department. It’s an attack on a fundamental pillar of the rule of law – that prosecutors should make decisions about whether and how they should bring cases without political concerns.View image in fullscreenEven though January 6 was one of the most explosive political events in recent history, Gordon said he never had any conversations with a supervisor in which they discussed the political ramifications of what they were doing. The political implications “didn’t matter”, he said.“What we did discuss was the importance we saw in protecting democracy and prosecuting these cases. And creating the precedent and the deterrence that political violence was unacceptable. Full stop,” he said. “And that was worth doing no matter what. It’s why I still think all these prosecutions were worth doing. Even after the pardons, even after my own firing.”The mass firings of career prosecutors is “unprecedented”, said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a watchdog group.“There’s enormous discretion that prosecutors have, and there is a tradition that it’s not about winning, it’s about doing justice, and we’re watching that tradition change into it’s neither about winning or doing justice, but it’s doing the bidding of President Trump,” he said.Two other prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases were fired on the same day. Their dismissals came after Ed Martin, a prominent defense lawyer for January 6 defendants, launched a “weaponization working group” at the Department of Justice.Gordon and others who work with him aren’t sure why he and two other colleagues were singled out among hundreds of career prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. The justice department did not return a request for comment on his firing.One theory is that Gordon was targeted because he took on some of the most high-profile cases, including that of Richard Barnett, who was photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office (sentenced to 54 months in prison), Eric Munchel, known as Zip Tie Guy (sentenced to 57 months in prison), and Ray Epps, who became the center of conspiracy theories about January 6.In person, Gordon, who is 47 with salt-and-pepper hair, has a boyishness that belies his intensity as a prosecutor. During an interview at his home in Tampa, where an American flag was flying outside his door, he sat barefoot and in shorts, knees tucked to his chest as he recounted his time working on the January 6 cases and processing his firing.View image in fullscreenLast month, Gordon and two other justice department employees filed a federal lawsuit challenging his dismissal, alleging that they had been wrongfully fired. A litigator in his bones, Gordon has mapped out in his head how he thinks the administration is likely to defend itself. He thinks the case will ultimately be decided by the US supreme court.“I can tell you that I have been contacted plenty of times by colleagues from my former office who tell me that they’re all wondering, am I next? Have I done something that’s going to be on the wrong side of this administration? Am I going to be punished for some other work I’ve done?” he said.Before he was a prosecutor, Gordon taught high school humanities and his voice still carries the boom of someone who can hold the attention of a classroom of teenagers. He does not mix up facts. When I mistakenly said Barnett, one of the defendants he successfully prosecuted, had put his feet on Pelosi’s desk, he politely responded that it had been a desk in her office. And when I repeated what I thought were the names of his two cockapoos – Cereal and Cheerio – he quietly corrected me. “Maple and Cheerio,” he said.Gordon said he saw the January 6 riot unfold on television while he was folding laundry, four years after he joined the justice department. The prosecutor part of his brain quickly kicked in, he said: “I’m watching a crime scene, I’m watching a crime unfold. And there are all these television cameras around, which is really rare.”In the back of his mind, he recalled something that a mentor told him as a newly minted federal prosecutor in 2017. Throughout his whole life, she told him, he had probably seen something that might be a crime and thought “somebody should do something about that”. Now, he was the person who could do something about it.Initially, Gordon, who was working on violent crimes and narcotics cases in the US attorney’s office for the middle district of Florida, thought that he could help on some of the cases if they involved people from around Tampa. But as the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington charged with investigating January 6 began its work, more attorneys were needed and the department sent out a request for more staff. Gordon volunteered and was chosen.Working remotely from Tampa and traveling to Washington for trials, Gordon became one of several prosecutors taking on cases as they were randomly assigned. In 2022, one of the cases he prosecuted was Kyle Fitzsimons, a 39-year-old man from Maine who wore a white butcher’s jacket and fur pelt, and carried an unstrung bow, and who assaulted five law enforcement officers in a span of about five minutes. He was sentenced to 87 months in prison.Gordon’s performance got the attention of his supervisors and he earned a reputation as a skilled trial litigator. He was put on more trials on some of the more high-profile cases the department was prosecuting. He eventually got a new title – “senior trial counsel” – and would work with lawyers in the Capitol siege section to go over their briefs, help them prepare arguments and go to trial.“I felt the weight of the responsibility to do it well and do it right,” he said. Taking a long pause, he added: “I felt passionate about the righteousness of what we were doing.“I welcome the scrutiny. I’m well aware of the irony that it’s those kinds of things that are probably why I’m unemployed now, probably why I was fired, because I did take on those higher-profile things and this is the risk that sort of comes with it.”“I mean, he worked his ass off,” said Gregory Rosen, Gordon’s boss, and the head of the Capitol siege section (Rosen resigned from the justice department in June). “He is absolutely the heavy hitter in terms of getting cases across the line and taking these high-profile cases. He doesn’t shy away easily. He’s not afraid of the limelight. And he knows how to put his head down and get through the nitty-gritty.”Other prosecutors in the Capitol siege section would even come watch Gordon cross-examine a witness or present to a jury, said Jason Manning, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Gordon.“Mike’s reputation for excellence in court was such that people really made time to go watch him perform,” Manning said. “You simply don’t replace people like Mike overnight.”One of the highest-profile cases Gordon took on was that of Barnett, an Arkansas man who had become one of the most prominent January 6 rioters when he was photographed with his feet on a desk in Pelosi’s office. He also left her a note that said: “Hey Nancy Bigo was here, biatch.” Even though Barnett’s conduct was “somewhere in the middle” on the spectrum of January 6 cases, Gordon understood there would be considerable public attention on the trial.He welcomed the opportunity to show the public how thoroughly the government had investigated the case against Barnett. He also embraced the opportunity to show that Barnett’s crime wasn’t that he merely put his feet on a desk in Pelosi’s office – he came to the Capitol with weapons: a 10lb metal pole and a stun device concealed in a walking stick, which he brandished at a police officer.“The cross-examination got a lot of attention,” he said.View image in fullscreenBarnett offered a litany of excuses trying to downplay his conduct on the day of January 6, at one point arguing that he had been looking for a bathroom and had wandered into Pelosi’s office. Gordon pointed out he had spent a considerable amount of time wandering around the Capitol and never asked for directions to a bathroom.Barnett also stole an envelope from Pelosi’s office, but said he didn’t consider it a crime because it was a “biohazard” as he had gotten blood on it. He had left a quarter and said he didn’t consider it theft.“He had a number of just patently obvious lies,” Gordon said. “It’s very clear that he had the intent, and here’s all the evidence we’ve amassed against this guy to show the public we’ve done our homework.“People can see all the different witnesses. They can hear from Barnett himself, how he responds to cross-examination. Because folks go on friendly podcasts, they post on Twitter, there’s nobody pushing back.”Barnett was convicted on eight counts, both felonies and misdemeanors, and sentenced to more than four years in prison.After Barnett was sentenced, Gordon prosecuted the case against Epps, an Arizona man who was on the Capitol grounds on January 6 and, the night before, encouraged protesters to go to the Capitol. He initially wasn’t charged with a crime, but his life was upended when he became the subject of a conspiracy theory, touted by Tucker Carlson and others, that he was a federal agent. Eventually he was charged with a misdemeanor, making him one of the few people charged with a crime who didn’t enter the Capitol on January 6.Epps eventually pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor. Gordon submitted a sentencing memo on behalf of the government that said Epps should be sentenced to six months in prison, $500 in restitution and a year of supervised release. He was eventually sentenced to a year of probation.Gordon said the case was the hardest one he worked on.“Figuring out what the right thing to do with the Ray Epps case was a real challenge,” he said.“I’m well aware that not everyone agrees. But someone needed to be the lightning rod to handle that, and somebody needed to be able to handle the public appearances.”Edward Ungvarsky, Epps’s lawyer, said that while he and Gordon disagreed on what should happen in the case, he saw Gordon as apolitical, “thoughtful” and “just very by the book”.“He wasn’t political in the slightest,” Ungvarsky said. “I wouldn’t have known if he was a Republican or a Democrat.”When Gordon and I first spoke shortly after he was fired, he was hesitant to go on the record because he thought there was an outside chance that he could get his job back. “It seemed so unjust. It seemed so, not only at odds with my performance, but also what I understood my reputation to be within my office,” he said. As the weeks stretched on, he said, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen.He’s since explained to his children why he was fired. Gordon’s 10-year-old son “understands the idea that something wrong happened to me and I’m doing what I can to speak up about it and to fight back”, he said. “And he really admires that. And that’s another thing that gives me inspiration and fuel.”These days, Gordon says that he has no regrets.“It was the right thing to do,” he said. “I will always operate from the position that I will do the right thing first, and then I’ll worry about what the consequences of that are.” More

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      Trump reportedly considers reclassifying marijuana as less dangerous drug

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      Donald Trump is considering reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.At a $1m-a-plate fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month, Trump told attendees he was interested in making such a change, the people, who declined to be named, told the newspaper.The reclassification, to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances and make it a Schedule III drug, was proposed by the Biden administration, but not enacted. The change would make it much easier to buy and sell marijuana and make the legal multibillion-dollar industry more profitable.The guests at Trump’s fundraiser included Kim Rivers, chief executive of Trulieve, one of the largest marijuana companies, who encouraged Trump to pursue the change and expand medical marijuana research, the report said.During Trump’s first term, two Soviet-born Republican donors, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, directly appealed to Trump for help with their plan to sell marijuana in states where recreational use was legal. Audio of the 2018 dinner, which was secretly recorded by the two men, revealed that Trump was skeptical, telling the two men that he believed marijuana use “does cause an IQ problem; you lose IQ points”.In the same conversation, the Ukrainian-born Parnas first suggested to Trump that he should remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and shared a false rumor that the diplomat was badmouthing the president by “telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached.’”Parnas and Fruman later helped Rudy Giuliani search for dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, before being indicted and found guilty of campaign finance violations, for secretly using a Russian oligarch’s money to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns and committees, including Trump’s, in pursuit of favors for their planned legal marijuana business.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      US court tosses judge’s contempt order over Trump’s El Salvador deportations

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      An appeals court on Friday tossed out a judge’s finding of contempt against the Trump administration in a case over the notorious deportations of Venezuelans from the US to an El Salvador prison without due process.The decision from a divided three-judge panel based in the nation’s capital vacates a finding from US district judge James Boasberg.Boasberg found in April there was probable cause to hold Donald Trump’s administration in criminal contempt of court for willfully disregarding his 15 March order barring the deportations to El Salvador of more than 250 Venezuelans from immigration detention in the US to a brutal prison in the Central American country, under an agreement with the Salvadorian leadership, without the chance to challenge their removals. The Trump administration appealed.On Friday, Washington DC circuit judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both of whom were nominated by Trump in his first term in the White House, concurred with the unsigned majority opinion. Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by Barack Obama when he was president, dissented.View image in fullscreenBoasberg had accused Trump administration officials of rushing deportees out of the country under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act before they could challenge their removal in court and then willfully disregarding his order that planes already in the air should return to the US.The Republican administration has denied violating his order.“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” circuit judge Katsas wrote in an opinion.The Trump administration claimed that all the Venezuelans it removed to El Salvador outside the normal constitutional process were violent gang members, which many of the deportees denied and critics said, regardless of any of the individuals’ criminal guilt or innocence, did not justify denying them due process in the US.The episode has been one of the most high-profile of the second Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda, in addition to widespread raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in communities across the country.“The district court’s order attempts to control the Executive Branch’s conduct of foreign affairs, an area in which a court’s power is at its lowest ebb,” Rao wrote.Pillard dissented. “The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust,” she wrote.The 250 migrants have since been released back to their home country in a prisoner swap with the US after months at the mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot).The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, celebrated the appeals court ruling, calling it a “MAJOR victory defending President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act” in a social media post and vowing to “continue fighting and WINNING in court”.Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the migrants, said there was “zero ambiguity” in Boasberg’s order about the planes.“We strongly disagree with today’s decision regarding contempt and are considering all options going forward,” he said.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s tariffs face skepticism in court hours before latest round is set to kick in

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      Donald Trump’s global tariffs faced significant skepticism in a federal appeals court on Thursday, as judges investigated whether the president had overstretched his powers just hours before the latest sweeping round of duties is set to kick in.The full 11-strong bench of the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC is considering whether Trump exceeded his authority in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on a large number of US trading partners.Judges repeatedly asked if Trump was justified in relying on emergency powers to effectively tear up the US tariff schedule without consulting Congress.Businesses challenging his strategy accused the White House of engineering a “breathtaking” attempt to force it through, unlike any trade move attempted by a US administration in two centuries.The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump has used to invoke emergency powers and enforce many of his tariffs, “doesn’t even say ‘tariffs’”, one of the judges noted. “Doesn’t even mention them.”In May a three-judge panel of the court of international trade blocked the import duties on grounds that Trump’s use of IEEPA was unjustified. The appeals court has stayed that ruling pending the outcome of Thursday’s hearing.“The government uses IEEPA all the time,” said Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil division, representing the administration, to the court. He conceded, however, that it was the first IEEPA had been used to implement tariffs.The US trade deficit – the gap between what it imports to and exports from the world – has “reached a tipping point”, claimed Shumate, enabling Trump to take emergency action. “It’s affecting our military readiness,” he said. “It’s affecting our domestic manufacturing capability.”But Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing businesses challenging the tariffs, argued that Trump was laying a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years”.The administration is effectively saying “that our federal courts are powerless; that the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long he wants – so long as he declares an emergency”, Katyal argued.Trump posted about the hearing on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, calling it “America’s big case”. He said: “If our Country was not able to protect itself by using TARIFFS AGAINST TARIFFS, WE WOULD BE ‘DEAD,’ WITH NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL OR SUCCESS.”“Now the tide has completely turned, and America has successfully countered this onslaught of Tariffs used against it,” the president claimed. “ONE YEAR AGO, AMERICA WAS A DEAD COUNTRY, NOW IT IS THE ‘HOTTEST’ COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.”The challenge to Trump’s use of emergency powers has been brought by five small businesses acting alongside 12 Democratic-controlled states. They argue that the IEEPA was designed to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats arising in national emergencies, and that the reason for the tariffs do not meet that standard.The small businesses are being represented by a libertarian public interest law firm, the Liberty Justice Center. The non-profit is supported by billionaire rightwing donors including Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein, who, paradoxically, have also been major backers of Trump’s presidential campaigns. More

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      US states sue over Trump demand to collect details of food assistance recipients

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      A coalition of 20 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration’s demand that their states turn over personal data of people enrolled in a federally funded food assistance program, fearing the information will be used to aid mass deportations.The data demand comes as the Trump administration has sought to collect private information on mostly lower-income people who may be in the country illegally. It has already ordered the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to share private information with the Department of Homeland Security to aid in deportation efforts.The US Department of Agriculture told states last week that they had until Wednesday to hand over the data for those enrolled in its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, which serves more than 42 million people nationwide. The USDA said the data would help it combat waste, fraud and abuse.The states’ lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the data transfer. In the meantime, state attorneys general in the Snap lawsuit said they will not disclose what they consider to be private information of recipients – including their immigration status, birthdates and home addresses – because they believe it would be a violation of privacy laws.“It’s a bait-and-switch of the worst kind,” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, in a Monday afternoon news conference announcing the lawsuit. “Snap recipients provided this information to get help feeding their families, not to be entered into a government surveillance database or be used as targets in the president’s inhumane immigration agenda.”In May, the department announced it was seeking the data as part of Donald Trump’s executive order to obtain data from state programs to help root out fraud and waste. “For years, this program has been on autopilot, with no USDA insight into real-time data,” said Brooke L Rollins, the USDA secretary, in a statement at the time. “The Department is focused on appropriate and lawful participation in Snap, and today’s request is one of many steps to ensure Snap is preserved for only those eligible.”USDA officials declined a request for comment on the suit.The USDA did not mention immigration enforcement in the announcement or later notices. It is not clear why USDA officials believe the data will help it weed out fraud and abuse. The agency claims the program is already “one of the most rigorous quality control systems in the federal government”.Immigration advocates noted that the Trump administration has used the same argument to obtain other sensitive data, only to later admit it would be using the information to enhance its deportation operations. Trump administration officials, for example, initially claimed they were seeking state Medicaid data to fight fraud. Last week, a top immigration official conceded they would be utilizing that same information to locate immigrants.Agency officials have threatened to withhold Snap funding if states fail to comply with their demand for data.While immigrants without legal status are ineligible to receive Snap benefits, they can apply on behalf of their children who are US citizens or those who are part of a mixed-status household.Under the program, formerly known as food stamps, the federal government pays for 100% of the food benefits, but the states help cover the administrative costs. States are also responsible for determining whether individuals are eligible for benefits and for issuing those benefits to enrollees.Immigration and data privacy advocates expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain sensitive Snap data maintained by states.“The administration has all but told us that their intention is to comb this data and use it for unlawful purposes that include immigration enforcement,” said Madeline Wiseman, an attorney with the National Student Legal Defense Network, which filed a lawsuit in May with privacy and hunger relief groups that are also challenging USDA’s efforts for Snap data. More

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      Why Trump’s political playbook is failing in the Epstein case | Jan-Werner Müller

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      The problem with a successful playbook is that you eventually keep doing the same thing mechanically. Fresh from intimidating ABC and CBS with meritless lawsuits, Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal reporters who broke the story of a lewd birthday message for Jeffrey Epstein. But, unlike with the frivolous allegations against the big broadcasters, there’s clearly a fact of the matter here: an authentic letter either exists or it does not; and there is plenty to be revealed in the process of finding out. Trump’s time-proven move – whatever happens, just counter-attack – is likely to keep the very story he wants to kill alive. Meanwhile, the other elements of his playbook – deny, deflect, distract – only work if journalists and Democrats play along. They, not the seemingly all-important Trump base, are the actors to watch.We still debate whether Trumpism is a substantial ideology or not; what we are missing is that Trumpism, for sure, is a set of tactics for exploiting weaknesses in the US political, legal and media systems. Some of these tactics were inherited from his mentor Roy Cohn and many are now being adopted by Trump’s followers – one must never admit guilt; one must always swing back; and one must reject, or ideally entirely bury, defeats (such as Trump’s case against Bob Woodward and Woodward’s publisher being dismissed recently).But there is also a less obvious element, and it has to do with managing political time (a challenge for all politicians, come to think of it). The point is not just seizing opportunities or exploiting opponents’ weaknesses in a timely manner; rather, it is about the art of speeding things up or slowing them down to one’s advantage. Think of how we appear to have become inured to Trump doing and saying things that would have ended previous presidencies (OK, previous presidents did not have AI-generated images of themselves as kings or popes available, but still).One reason is this: an administration that faces one or two big scandals in a four-year period may well be damaged beyond repair; one that produces three very big scandals a day seems to have nothing to worry about since no one can keep up. It is difficult to stick with one story, as the newest outrage already appears so much bigger (the Qatar plane scandal can feel like it happened years ago). To be sure, not all scandals are consciously produced, but there is little doubt that Trump’s posting an AI-generated clip of Barack Obama being arrested in the White House and identifying Obama as a “ringleader” of election fraud are meant to distract – which is not to deny that they would justify impeachment.While the frequency of scandals is maximized to game the news cycle, the legal system is used to slow things down. Releasing the grand jury testimonies in the Epstein case will take time, if the request is not rejected altogether by courts (as has already happened in Florida). Even if they are released, they are unlikely to contain anything relevant about Trump. The calculation is that, a few weeks from now, the files will be forgotten.None of this is to suggest Trump is a master Machiavellian who can manipulate Americans (or even just his base) at will. His approach partly works because institutional and cultural contexts have changed: news cycles are shorter, as are attention spans. His behavior has become progressively normalized – and generalized: shamelessness once unique to him is now in the manual of required GOP conduct (just think of blatant lies about Medicaid). Most important, a free press sticking relentlessly with scandals and ignoring intimidation can no longer be taken for granted; broadcasters in particular have become vulnerable to parent companies putting profits before everything else. Democrats, understandably not wanting to look like they mainly focus on the sordid details of the Epstein story, are tempted to move on and deal with the vaunted “kitchen-table issues”. But it should give them pause that the story is apparently so scary for the other side that Republicans would rather shut down the House than deal with it in any shape or form.Are they right to panic? For sure, Trump made a mistake with his social media post urging followers to move on, which was the equivalent of “don’t think of an elephant” (while also providing further evidence for the Streisand effect: censorship generates the very attention meant to be avoided). Trump lobbying Murdoch to kill the story will give pause to all still naive enough to think of Republicans as free speech defenders. By now, the fact that releasing only the grand jury testimony is relatively meaningless has sunk in and – never mind the base – what political scientists call “low-information voters” will be left with a lasting impression of a Trump-Epstein connection or at least a chaotic administration. In the lawsuit, Trump has to prove “actual malice” on the part of the newspaper – a difficult hurdle to jump. Unlike with the Russia investigation, Trump himself is the instigator of a lengthy process overshadowing his presidency; unlike with the many investigations between his presidential terms, when his lawyers outran the clock, time is not really on his side. In fact, he might be lucky if the case is dismissed on a technicality – he apparently failed to comply with a Florida law that requires giving defendants five days’ notice.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More

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      Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down

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      In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s.The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law.Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying.These orders “provide students with really important protections against discrimination”, said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. “They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they’re assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they’re violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.”The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a “joint stipulated dismissal”. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general’s office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal.“I’m not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,” said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. “The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it’s supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there’s no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.”Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree.“No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. “This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we’re now getting America refocused on our bright future.”But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.”In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist.Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating.Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white.Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so.According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Separate but equal doesn’t work,” said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. “The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they’re going to be shut out, whether that’s from AP classes, whether that’s from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.”“Public education isn’t just about education for the sake of education,” he added. “It’s about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It’s on our democracy writ large.”Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision “signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation’s schools”.“Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,” he said. “The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they’re not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.”Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a “slippery slope” in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration.“The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,” he said. “I worry that we’re going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.” More