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      Trump justice department fires officials who worked for prosecutor Jack Smith

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      The acting attorney general, James McHenry, on Monday fired more than a dozen federal prosecutors who worked on the two criminal cases against Donald Trump, saying they could not be trusted to implement the president’s agenda for the justice department, two people familiar with the matter said.The precise extent of the firings were unclear because the department did not disclose names. At the time the cases were dismissed last year, after Trump won the election, special counsel Jack Smith had 18 prosecutors attached to his team.The purge was not unexpected given Trump had vowed, on the campaign trail, to fire Smith. But the abrupt firings were jarring as the acting attorney general took aim at career prosecutors who had served at the department who in theory had civil service protections for their jobs.Smith charged Trump in two criminal cases: in Florida, for mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and defying a subpoena commanding their return; and in Washington, for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.In the termination notices transmitted to the prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team, McHenry wrote that they were being let go as a result of their “significant role in prosecuting President Trump” which meant they could not be trusted to “assist in faithfully implementing the president’s agenda”.The termination of Smith’s team comes as major personnel changes shook the deputy attorney general’s office, where the top career official, Brad Weinsheimer, was informed he could either be reassigned to a less powerful post or resign, according to a person familiar with the matter.Weinsheimer, a highly respected veteran of the justice department, was appointed to his current role on an interim basis by Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, which was made permanent by Trump’s final attorney general, Bill Barr.But Trump has since soured on Sessions and Barr, and their endorsements appear to have been of no help to Weinsheimer as the new Trump administration moves to clear the senior leadership of the justice department as they prepare to use it to enforce Trump’s personal and political agenda.The White House and a justice department spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment on the personnel moves, which were earlier reported by Fox News.Shortly after Trump announced his presidential bid in November 2022, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Smith to serve as a special counsel overseeing the investigation of Trump. Smith resigned before Trump took office.In a report released this month, Smith concluded that the president engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by Trump’s November election victory. Smith also investigated Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left the White House, filing a second federal lawsuit in Florida.Trump’s lawyers have called Smith’s report politically motivated. The president denies any wrongdoing in the cases, both of which Smith dropped shortly after Trump’s election win, citingThe two special counsel investigations resulted in indictments, but Smith dropped the cases against Trump after the election, citing a longstanding justice department policy that prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.In a separate development, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that a Trump-appointed prosecutor had opened an internal review of the justice department’s decision to charge hundreds of January 6 defendants with felony obstruction offenses in connection with the 2021 attack on the US Capitol. More

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      Trump allies float extreme ideas, including Trump third term, at gala

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      Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated attendees.The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner that also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black-collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal,” Bannon said to the raucous room. “They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them?“We want all your emails, all your text messages, everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monaco and Jack Smith,” Bannon said, name checking the attorney general, former Democratic House speaker, the deputy attorney general and the Trump special counsel.The threatening rhetoric, and especially the concept of using a criminal conspiracy statute against Trump’s political enemies, has been permeating through Bannon’s orbit for some time since the election. But Sunday night’s gala was the first time it was floated outside of the Maga ecosystem.The remarks also turned bizarre at various points as Bannon segued into talking about the importance of the bond market, perhaps in a nod to his previous life as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and questioned whether the New York mayor, Eric Adams, was a QAnon conspiracy adherent.In a night of unexpected turns, the most dramatic moment came earlier when senior Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz keeled over the lectern and collapsed off the stage in an apparent medical episode. Organizers later said he was treated on-site and speculated he had a seizure.The gala then had a further bizarre twist when Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino took to the stage to fill the moment, but was interrupted when he got a phone call from the president-elect himself, who apparently was asking about Bruesewitz.Scavino put the call on speakerphone and had Trump address the gala in real time, but Trump mostly ended up delivering praise for Bruesewitz instead. “I guess the show goes on,” one bemused Bannon associate said to his seat neighbor as he watched the situation unfold.The gala dinner at Cipriani on Wall Street drew the same Trumpworld figures as it has for several years, including Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, Nigel Farage, Trump legal adviser Mike Davis, and a cast of Bannon allies including the emcee, Raheem Kassam. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was invited to attend but did not make an appearance.Sitting at the table directly in front of the stage and next to Farage, the other guest of honor, Epshteyn was singled out by Bannon for orchestrating Trump’s legal victories including the dismissal of the criminal cases against him. “Boris, I don’t know how you did it,” Bannon said. More

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      Trump will destroy the government agencies that most help working people | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      The Republican party has shellacked its clean-cut corporatism, in recent years, with a veneer of economic populism. See JD Vance’s pseudo-criticisms of Wall Street, so gestural they could be mistaken for an interpretive dance routine, or Donald Trump’s stint as a McDonald’s “employee”, which seemed more inspired by his contempt for Kamala Harris than his affection for fry cooks.But when it comes to how the second Trump administration actually intends to govern, there have already been plenty of signals that they intend to target and weaken – if not outright destroy – the parts of government most beneficial to working people. And right now, the agency most clearly in their crosshairs is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).While there’s new fervor behind rightwing efforts to undermine the CFPB – or, indeed, “delete” it, as Elon Musk recently tweeted – these attacks have been ongoing since the agency’s inception. In his first term, in fact, Trump slashed the CFPB’s budget, appointed a vocal critic to run it and rolled back regulations protecting consumers from predatory practices.Trump and his nearly-half-trillionaire “first buddy” feel threatened for good reason: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the few federal agencies created explicitly to help average Americans, and actually given authority to do so. Its efforts have represented some of the Biden administration’s most impactful advances for working people – and gutting it would be among the most devastating anti-consumer moves the Trump administration could make.The CFPB was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw almost 400 banks fold and American households lose about $17tn in wealth (that’s 42 Elon Musks). The popular narrative rightfully blames predatory lending and securities fraud, but those lapses were only possible because of decades-long bipartisan deregulation. In response, the then Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal agency to centralize regulation of the consumer financial sector, work which had been spread thin across seven different agencies. Rather than being “duplicative”, as Musk has claimed, the CFPB began as a novel effort to make government more responsive, effective and – indeed – efficient.But not until the current directorship of Rohit Chopra did the CFPB begin fulfilling its true potential. Since his appointment in 2021, Chopra has cracked down on exploitative consumer practices with a fervor not seen since Upton Sinclair stepped into a meatpacking plant.In the last year, the agency has banned excessive credit card late fees, saving consumers $10bn annually. It has started regulating “buy now, pay later” lenders, which often leave buyers on the hook for expensive purchases they return. It has created a registry of businesses who have repeatedly engaged in illegal practices, finally bringing a tough-on-crime approach to “corporate recidivism”. And just last week, the CFPB announced a rule capping overdraft fees that will return another $5bn to consumers every year.Chopra has notched these wins while burnishing a dynamic persona that might best be described as swashbuckler meets bureaucrat. He has embraced public engagement in a way most regulators don’t; see his PSAs on medical debt with Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan representative. He has also embraced conflict, prompting some opponents to accuse him of antagonism, as when he sued not just a credit reporting firm but one of its executives for misleading consumers. Still, one populist’s antagonism is most Americans’ vindication, and Chopra has even drawn reluctant praise from Republicans such as the onetime speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry.Other than consumers, arguably the biggest beneficiary of Chopra’s ferocity has been Joe Biden. The CFPB has accomplished many of his administration’s most unambiguously progressive (and practical) victories. Chopra joins a class of hugely productive Biden appointees – Lina Khan at the FTC, Marty Walsh and Julie Su at the Department of Labor, and a slate of pro-worker appointees at the National Labor Relations Board – who reaffirm the adage that “personnel is policy”.Even in the administration’s waning days, Khan’s FTC has helped unravel a merger between Kroger and Albertsons that would probably have spiked food prices, and raised alarms about “task scams” that have cheated targets out of millions. In this respect at least, Biden has taken a page from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gleefully stocked his cabinet with unabashed crusaders such as Frances Perkins, the mother of the New Deal.While many Democrats continue post-election recriminations, many will no doubt feel tempted to disavow anything and everything associated with the first one-term Democratic president since Carter. But a prevailing lesson of 2024 has been that voters respond to brash anti-corporate messaging, even when it comes from the mouths of an erstwhile venture capitalist and a real estate tycoon who stiffs workers.So even if the legacies of Chopra, Khan, Walsh and Su aren’t reflected in the next four years of governance, progressives can at least embrace them in their campaign rhetoric – especially in response to Trump’s imminent efforts to deter or even dismantle agencies such as the CFPB in favor of corporate interests.Three years ago, immediately after his swearing-in ceremony, Chopra wrote a memo describing the CFPB’s most important mission as this: “We must anticipate emerging risks so we can act before a crisis, rather than acting after it is too late.”It may be too late to avert the crisis of the last election. But it’s also the best time to act in anticipation of the next one.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More

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      Pete Hegseth will lift NDA related to sexual misconduct allegations, Lindsey Graham says

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      Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, is offering to release a woman from a non-disclosure agreement related to sexual misconduct allegations from 2017, Lindsey Graham revealed on Sunday.Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, the South Carolina senator said Hegseth assured him in a private meeting that he would lift the NDA, giving the accuser an opportunity to speak publicly about her allegations.“He told me he would release her from that agreement,” Graham said. “Just think about what we’re talking about; I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.”Hegseth has continued to deny the allegations. A statement from his lawyer, obtained by the Washington Post, confirmed a settlement was made while maintaining Hegseth’s innocence. According to police reports stemming from 2017, Hegseth took the unidentified woman’s phone before keeping her from leaving his hotel room, when he would then allegedly assault her.While the nomination has been picking up some steam again on the Hill, it still faces significant public skepticism. A recent AP-NORC poll found only 17% of respondents approve of Hegseth, with 36% disapproving and 37% lacking sufficient information to form an opinion.Graham drew parallels to the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh supreme court confirmation, dismissing what he characterized as unsubstantiated claims.“Five people accused Justice Kavanaugh of misconduct. Three were outright lies, the other two, I think, were not credible,” Graham said, a reference to the witness Christine Blasey Ford. “We’re not going to destroy [Hegseth’s] nomination based on anonymous sources.”Despite the ongoing controversy, Graham indicated he is prepared to support Hegseth’s confirmation, contingent on no new information emerging.He challenged the accuser to come forward publicly, saying: “If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it.”Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, previously told CNN that the settlement was made to prevent potential professional repercussions, characterizing the original agreement as a form of protection against potential career damage. More

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      Anxious scientists brace for Trump’s climate denialism: ‘We have a target on our backs’

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      As the world’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists swarmed a Washington venue last week, the packed halls have been permeated by an air of anxiety and even dread over a new Donald Trump presidency that might worsen what has been a bruising few years for science.The annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting drew a record 31,000 attendees this year for the unveiling of a slew of new research on everything from seismology to climate science to heliospheric physics, alongside a sprawling trade show and bouts of networking as scientists jostle to advance their work.As grad students and grizzled researchers huddled around pin-boarded presentations in a cavernous exhibition space, however, one person dominated muttered conversations: Trump. The president-elect has called climate science a “giant scam” and when last in office sought to gut US scientific funding and sidelined or even punished scientists deemed unfriendly to the interests of the chemical and fossil fuel industries.The prospect of an even more ideologically driven Trump administration slashing budgets and mass-firing federal staff has given America’s scientific community a sort of collective anxiety attack. “We all feel like we have a target on our backs,” said one National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, who added that agency staff are already seeking to “pivot” by replacing mentions of the climate crisis with more acceptable terms such as “air quality”.View image in fullscreen“My god, it’s so depressing,” said another federal scientist about the incoming administration. A doctoral candidate, when asked about entering the workforce under Trump, simply puffed her cheeks and groaned. “If someone offered me a departmental position now, I’d jump,” said one Nasa researcher. “It’s hard, particularly for younger people. Hopefully we will survive it all.”The challenges posed by the incoming administration barely featured in the official AGU program, which was more focused on highlighting new research – from a dire new warning about the melting Arctic to innovations that leverage artificial intelligence – and general boosterism of the value of science to our lives. But the leadership of the organization acknowledged there was a sense of unease.“Some of the signals coming out right now make people nervous about what’s going to happen to their jobs, their livelihoods, let alone what their science is,” said Ben Zaitchik, a climate scientist who will be president-elect of the AGU next year. “You could say people are feeling beleaguered or besieged, but many are also motivated. At the same time, it’s a time of transition. So we just don’t know.”Trump – through his alteration of hurricane maps with a Sharpie pen, staring with uncovered eyes at a solar eclipse and suggestion that disinfectant injections could cure Covid-19 – is seen by many here at the meeting as a catalyst of scientific contrarianism.This has been underscored by the nomination of Robert F Kennedy, who holds an array of conspiracy theories about vaccines, wind farms and chemtrails, as the nominee for the US’s new health secretary, as well as Trump’s promise this week to cast aside environmental reviews for “any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America”.View image in fullscreenBut scientists in the US face a broader crisis beyond the next president, amid a swirl of misinformation and declining trust in the profession among the American public. Overall trust in scientists has fallen by 10% since the pandemic, Pew polling has shown, with a growing partisan gap emerging in how science is viewed; nearly four in 10 Republicans now say they have little to no confidence in scientists acting in the public’s best interests.“When we get that kind of polling data, it is concerning,” acknowledged Lisa Graumlich, a paleoclimatologist and the current AGU president. Gone, it seems, are the halcyon days of celebrity 19th-century scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt, or even the reception to the polio vaccine in the 1950s, which was greeted with ringing church bells, with its inventor, Jonas Salk, routinely being greeted with applause and handshakes when he was seen in public.By contrast, Anthony Fauci, the face of the US response to the Covid pandemic, requires round-the-clock security protection due to ongoing death threats, even after his retirement. Climate scientists and meteorologists, too, have faced threats and harassment.“The conspiracy theories are out there, the misinformation is there,” said Graumlich. “Social media engines and the algorithms can take a person that isn’t necessarily prone to a conspiracy mindset and have them end up in this rabbit hole of misinformation.”Some researchers think scientists should adapt to this hyper-partisan environment by sticking to unadorned facts, rather than anything that could be seen as campaigning. “We have been come to be seen as just another partisan lobbying group,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I want us to get back to a point where scientists are seen as the establishers of facts rather than arguing for policy. We need to get back to a situation where we have a shared set of facts.”Others are determined to press the case for science to guide decisions, if not in the White House then with Congress, which previously thwarted major Trump-demanded cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and Nasa’s Earth science work.View image in fullscreenJay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University who has come to AGU meetings since 1989, attended this year’s event to reveal terrifying findings about the loss of available freshwater around the world, due to the climate crisis and agricultural practices.“People like me who are experts need to step up and say, ‘I think this should be done,’” said Famiglietti, who has tangled with a family member about Trump and has even taken to switching Fox News off from the TVs in his local gym.“I mean I am not going to chain myself to a wellhead but I’m going to make sure the right people in Congress, in Washington, know about it,” he said. “Some people might want to jump off a bridge if they think about the next few years but I don’t think we need to go into a shell or be overly careful. We need to choose our words well, know our audience, but I’m very much in support of full speed ahead.”Even if Trump does follow Florida’s lead by deleting all mention of the climate crisis within the federal government, an oblivious world will continue to heat up regardless, bringing disasters and rising costs to Americans. Scientists say they will still be there when such truths become politically palatable again.“We are sober about the future, but we’re not daunted,” said Graumlich. “The facts are still facts, science is still science. The fight is bigger than just one political cycle, I’ve been doing this for 40 years. We’re not backing down.” More

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      Judge revokes decision to retire, foiling Trump’s replacement plans

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      A US appeals court judge has taken the rare step of revoking his decision to retire from active service on the bench, depriving Donald Trump of the ability to fill a judicial vacancy.US circuit judge James Wynn, an appointee of Barack Obama on the fourth US circuit court of appeals based in Richmond, Virginia, disclosed his decision in a letter to Joe Biden on Friday.It marked the first time since Trump won the 5 November presidential election that a Democrat-appointed appellate judge has rescinded plans to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges that creates vacancies presidents can fill.Two trial court judges have similarly done so, prompting complaints by conservatives including Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who railed about an “unprecedented” spate of judges un-retiring post-election.Thom Tillis, the Republican senator who had fought to prevent Biden’s pick to fill Wynn’s seat from winning Senate confirmation, said on X that Wynn had engaged in a “blatant attempt to turn the judicial retirement system into a partisan game”.Wynn sent his letter a day after Biden’s nominee to succeed him, the North Carolina solicitor general Ryan Park, formally withdrew from consideration after his path to win Senate confirmation vanished.Senate Democrats and Republicans post-election cut a deal that cleared the way for votes on about a dozen of Biden’s remaining trial court nominees in exchange for not pushing forward with four appellate court nominees, including Park.A spokesperson for Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has said all four lacked sufficient votes to be confirmed.That left four seats without confirmed nominees that Trump could try to fill upon taking office on 20 January. But two vacancies were contingent upon two Democrat-appointed judges following through on their plans to leave active service.Those judges included Wynn, 70, who in January announced plans to take senior status contingent upon a successor being confirmed. On Friday, he told Biden he had changed his mind.“I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused,” Wynn wrote.The Article III Project, a group run by Trump ally Mike Davis, late Friday announced it had meanwhile filed judicial misconduct complaints against the two trial court judges who likewise rescinded retirement plans post-election.Those judges are the US district judge Max Cogburn in North Carolina and the US district judge Algenon Marbley in Ohio. Neither responded to requests for comment. More

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      Trump names Truth Social head as chair of intelligence advisory board

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      Donald Trump on Saturday named ally Devin Nunes, a former US lawmaker who now runs Trump’s Truth Social social media platform, to serve as chair of the president’s intelligence advisory board.Nunes, a longtime Trump defender who led the US House of Representatives intelligence committee during part of Trump’s first White House term, will remain Truth Social CEO while serving on the advisory panel, Trump said in a post on the platform.As committee chair, Nunes alleged that the FBI had conspired against Trump during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.“Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Trump wrote.The president’s intelligence advisory board is a White House panel that offers the president independent assessments of intelligence agencies’ effectiveness and planning.Trump on Saturday also named IBM executive and former US Department of Homeland Security official Troy Edgar to serve as the department’s deputy secretary, and businessman Bill White to serve as the US ambassador to Belgium.Edgar was Trump’s former chief financial officer and associate deputy undersecretary of management for homeland security. White is the former CEO of the Intrepid Museum in New York City, the current CEO of the Constellations Group and a longtime friend of TrumpIn a post on Truth Social, Trump said Edgar was “previously the Mayor of Los Alamitos, California, where he helped me lead the City and County revolt against Sanctuary Cities in 2018”. More