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  • Commentary: So much winning. Can Bonta maintain California’s legal hot streak against Trump?

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    It was late Sunday evening when President Trump got thumped with a court loss — again — by California.

    No, a federal judge ruled, Trump cannot command the California National Guard to invade Portland, Ore. At the request of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and others, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut broadened a temporary restraining order that had blocked Oregon’s National Guard from being used by the federal government. It now includes not just California’s troops but troops from any state. At least for the next two weeks.

    It’s the kind of legal loss Trump should be used to it by now, especially when it comes to the Golden State. Since Trump 2.0 hit the White House this year with Project 2025 folded up in his back pocket, the state of California has sued the administration 42 times, literally about once a week.

    While many of those cases are still pending, California is racking up a series of wins that restored more than $160 billion in funding and at least slowed down (and in some cases stopped) the steamrolling of civil rights on issues including birthright citizenship and immigration policy.

    “We have won in 80% of the cases,” Bonta told me. “Whether it be a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order, and more and more now permanent final injunctions after the whole trial court case is done.”

    I’ll take it. We all need some positive news. I don’t often write just about the good, but in these strange days, it’s helpful to have a reminder that the fight is always worth having when it comes to protecting our rights. And, despite the partisan Supreme Court, the reason that we are still holding on to democracy is because the system still works, albeit like a ’78 Chevy with the doors rusting off.

    While Gov. Gavin Newsom has made himself the face of California’s fights against Trump, taking on a pugnacious and audacious attitude especially on social media, the day-in, day-out slugging in those battles is often done by Bonta and his team in courtrooms across the country.

    It’s hard to recall, but months ago, Newsom called a special session of the Legislature to give Bonta a $25-million allowance to defend not just California but democracy. And in a moment when many of us fear that checks and balances promised in the Constitution have turned out to be little more than happy delusions, Bonta has a message: The courts are (mostly) holding and California’s lawyers aren’t just fighting, they’re winning.

    “We can do things that governors can’t do,” Bonta said. “No role and no moment has been more important than this one.”

    Bonta told me that he often hears that Trump is disregarding the courts, so “what’s the point of litigation at all? What’s the point of a court order at all? He’s just going to ignore them.”

    But, he said, the administration has been following judges’ rulings — so far. While there have been instances, especially around deportations, that knock on the door of lawlessness, at least for California, Trump is “following all of our court orders,” Bonta said.

    “We’re making a difference,” he said.

    A few days ago, the U.S. Department of Education was forced to send out a final chunk of funds it had attempted to withhold from schools. Bonta, in a multistate lawsuit, successfully protected that money, which schools need this year to help migrant children and English learners, train teachers, buy new technology and pay for before- and after-school programs, among other uses.

    That’s a permanent, final ruling — no appeals.

    Another recent win saw California land a permanent injunction against the feds when it comes to stopping their payments for costs associated with state energy projects. That a win both for the climate and consumers, who benefit when we make energy more efficiently.

    Last week, Bonta won another permanent injunction, blocking the Trump administration’s effort to tie grants related to homeland security to compliance with his immigration policies. Safety shouldn’t be tied to deportations, especially in California, where our immigrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding community members.

    Those are just a few of Bonta’s victories. Of course, Trump and his minions aren’t happy about them. Stephen Miller, the shame of Santa Monica, seems to have especially lost his marbles over the National Guard ruling. On social media, Miller seems to be attacking the justice system, and attorneys general such as Bonta.

    “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country,” Miller wrote. “It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

    Never mind that the Oregon judge who issued the National Guard ruling is a Trump appointee.

    “Their goal, I think, is to chill and pause and worry judges; to chill and pause and worry the press; to chill and pause and worry attorneys general who stand up for the rule of law and for democracy, who go to court and fight for what’s right and fight for the law,” Bonta said.

    Bonta expects the administration, far from learning any lessons or harboring self-reflection during this mad dash toward autocracy, to continue full speed ahead.

    “We’re going to see more, and we’re going to see it fast, and we’re going to see it escalate,” he said. “None of that is good, including putting military in American cities or, you know, Trump treating them like his royal guard instead of the National Guard.”

    Even when the Trump administration loses, “they always have this like second move and maybe a third, where they are always trying to advance their agenda, even when they’ve been blocked by a court, even when they’ve been told that they’re acting unlawfully or unconstitutionally,” he said.

    On Monday, Trump threatened to use the Insurrection Act to circumvent the court’s ruling on the National Guard, a massive escalation of his effort to militarize American cities.

    But California remains on a winning streak, much to Trump’s dismay.

    It’s my bet that as long as our judges continue to honor the rule of law, that streak will hold.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Trump slams judge he picked as court tests limits of president’s power to deploy troops

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    President Trump has often locked horns with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the once left-leaning court putting a persistent drag on his first-term agenda.

    And now, even after remaking the bench with his own appointees, the president is still tangling with the West Coast’s federal appellate court — a situation poised to boil over as the circuit juggles multiple challenges to his use of the National Guard to police American streets.

    “I appointed the judge and he goes like that — I wasn’t served well,” Trump told reporters Sunday, lashing out at U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland after she temporarily blocked the deployment of federalized troops.

    “To have a judge like that, that judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump said, referring to Immergut, who is a woman.

    The president has long railed against judges who rule against him, calling them “monsters,” “deranged,” and “radical” at various points in the past.

    Trump has also occasionally sniped at conservative jurists, including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he called “disgraceful” after the court rejected his bid to overturn the 2020 election.

    But this weekend’s spat marked a shift in his willingness to go after his own appointees — a turn experts say could become much sharper as his picks to the appellate bench test his ambition to put boots on the ground in major cities across the U.S.

    “The fact that a pretty conservative judge ruled the way she did is an indication that some conservative judges would rule similarly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.

    The 9th Circuit handed the administration an early victory in the troop fight this spring, finding that courts must give “a great level of deference” to the president to decide whether facts on the ground warrant military intervention.

    That ruling is set to be reviewed by a larger appellate panel, and could ultimately be reversed. The circuit is also now set to review a September decision barring federalized troops in California from aiding in civilian law enforcement, as well as Immergut’s temporary restraining order blocking the deployment over the weekend.

    In the meantime, the 9th Circuit’s June decision has served as a guidepost for states seeking to limit what Oregon called a “nationwide campaign to assimilate the military into civilian law enforcement.”

    “That decision is binding, and it does require a substantial degree of deference on the factual issues,” Somin said. “[But] when what the president does is totally divorced from reality, that limit is breached.”

    Immergut appeared to agree, saying in her ruling that circumstances in Portland this fall were significantly different than those in L.A. in the spring. While some earlier protests did turn violent, she wrote, recent pickets outside Portland’s ICE headquarters have featured lawn chairs and low energy.

    “Violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to execute the laws using nonmilitary federal law enforcement,” the judge wrote, addressing the 9th Circuit decision.

    “The President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference,’” Immergut continued. “But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. … The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

    But exactly where the appellate court may draw the line on presidential fact-finding is tricky, experts said.

    “How much deference is owed to the president? That’s something we’re all talking about,” said John C. Dehn, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

    Whether courts can review the president’s judgment at all is a matter that splits even some of the president’s most conservative judicial picks from his current Justice Department attorneys.

    So far, Trump has relied on an esoteric subsection of the U.S. Code for the authority to send soldiers on immigration raids and to control crowds of protesters.

    Dehn and others have characterized that reading of the code as semantic and divorced from its legal context.

    “They’re looking at the words in a vacuum and arguing the broadest possible meaning they can think of,” Dehn said. “The administration is not engaged in good faith statutory interpretation — they’re engaged in linguistic manipulation of these statutes.”

    Immegur agreed, quoting Supreme Court precedent saying “[i]nterpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text.”

    For some conservative legal scholars, Trump appointees’ willingness to push back on repeated deployments could signal a limit — or a dangerous new escalation in the administration’s attacks on jurists who defy them.

    “It’s obvious the administration is trying to do this on a bigger scale,” Somin said. “Ideally we would not rely on litigation alone to deal with it.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • Stephen Miller leads GOP charge equating Democrats to ‘domestic terrorists’

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    WASHINGTON — President Trump rocked American politics at the outset of his first campaign when he first labeled his rivals as enemies of the American people. But the rhetoric of his top confidantes has grown more extreme in recent days.

    Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared over the weekend that “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is fueling an historic national schism, “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”

    “The only remedy,” Miller said, “is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

    It was a maxim from an unelected presidential advisor who is already unleashing the federal government in unprecedented ways, overseeing the federalization of police forces and a sweeping deportation campaign challenging basic tenets of civil liberty.

    Miller’s rhetoric comes amid a federal crackdown on Portland, Ore., where he says the president has unchecked authority to protect federal lives and property — and as another controversial Trump advisor harnesses an ongoing government shutdown as pretext for the mass firing of federal workers.

    Russ Vought, the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, plays the grim reaper in an AI video shared by the president, featuring him roving Washington for bureaucrats to cut from the deep state during the shutdown.

    His goal, Trump has said, is to specifically target Democrats.

    As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear exactly how many federal workers or what federal agencies would be targeted.

    “We don’t want to see people laid off, but unfortunately, if this shutdown continues layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” White House press secretary Karoline Levitt said during a news briefing.

    ‘A nation of Constitutional law’

    Karin Immergut, a federal judge appointed by Trump, said this weekend that the administration’s justification for deploying California National Guard troops in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.”

    “This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote, chiding the Trump administration for attempting to circumvent a prior order from her against a federal deployment to the city.

    “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition,” she added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

    The administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision, Leavitt said, while calling the judge’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”

    “We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this, and we are very confident we will win on the merits of the law,” Leavitt said.

    If the courts were to side with the administration, Leavitt said local leaders — most of whom are Democrats — should not be concerned about the possibility of long-term plans to have their cities occupied by the military.

    “Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?” Leavitt said. “They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night and the president, all he is trying to do, is fix it.”

    Moments later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he does not believe it is necessary yet, he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act “if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up.”

    “Sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”

    The Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping emergency power to deploy military forces within the United States if the president deems it is needed to quell civil unrest. The last time this occurred was in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send federal troops to help stop the Los Angeles riots that occurred after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.

    Subsequent posts from Miller on social media over the weekend escalated the stakes to existential heights, accusing Democrats of allying themselves with “domestic terrorists” seeking to overturn the will of the people reflected in Trump’s election win last year.

    On Monday, in an interview with CNN, Miller suggested that the administration would continue working to sidestep Immergut’s orders.

    “The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties,” he said, “but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the U.S. military to Portland.”

    Other Republicans have used similar rhetoric since the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist, in Utah last month.

    Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) wrote that posts from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have reached “the threshold of domestic terrorism,” after the Democratic governor referred to Miller on social media as a fascist. And Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Monday that Democrats demanding an extension of healthcare benefits as a condition for reopening the government were equivalent to terrorists.

    “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Fine told Newsmax, “and what we’re learned in whether it’s dealing with Muslim terrorists or Democrats, you’ve gotta stand and you’ve gotta do the right thing.”

    Investigating donor networks

    Republicans’ keenness to label Democrats as terrorists comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order declaring a left-wing antifascist movement, known as antifa, as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under U.S. law.

    The order, which opened a new front in Trump’s battle against his political foes, also threatened to investigate and prosecute individuals who funded “any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of antifa.”

    Leavitt told reporters Monday the administration is “aggressively” looking into who is financially backing these operations.

    Trump has floated the possibility of going after people such as George Soros, a billionaire who has supported many left-leaning causes around the world.

    “If you look at Soros, he is at the top of everything,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance last month.

    The White House has not yet made public any details about a formal investigation into a donors, but Leavitt said the administration’s efforts are under way.

    “We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations and this organized anarchy against our country and our government,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to uncovering it.”

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    Michael Wilner, Ana Ceballos

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  • Trump uses repeated funding cuts to pressure California, complicating state’s legal fight

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    The federal Office for Victims of Crime announced in the summer that millions of dollars approved for domestic violence survivors and other crime victims would be withheld from states that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

    California, 19 other states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that such preconditions are illegal and would undermine public safety.

    The administration then took a different tack, announcing that community organizations that receive such funding from the states — and use it to help people escape violence, access shelter and file for restraining orders against their abusers — generally may not use it to provide services to undocumented immigrants.

    California and other states sued again, arguing that the requirements — which the administration says the states must enforce — are similarly illegal and dangerous. Advocates agreed, saying screening immigrant women out of such programs would be cruel.

    The repeated lawsuits reflect an increasingly familiar pattern in the growing mountain of litigation between the Trump administration, California and other blue states.

    Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has tried to force the states into submission on a host of policy fronts by cutting off federal funding, part of a drive to bypass Congress and vastly expand executive power. Repeatedly when those cuts have been challenged in court, the administration has shifted its approach to go after the same or similar funding from a slightly different angle — prompting more litigation.

    The repeated lawsuits have added complexity and volume to an already monumental legal war between the administration and states such as California, one that began almost immediately after Trump took office and is ongoing, as the administration once again threatens major cuts amid the government shutdown.

    The White House has previously dismissed California’s lawsuits as baseless and defended Trump’s right to enact his policy agenda, including by withholding funds. Asked about its shifting strategies in some of those cases, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration “has won numerous cases regarding spending cuts at the Supreme Court and will continue to cut wasteful spending across the government in a lawful manner.”

    Other administration officials have also defended its legal tactics. During a fight over frozen federal funding earlier this year, for instance, Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — sparking concerns about a constitutional crisis.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the pattern is a result of Trump overstating his power to control federal funding and use it as a weapon against his political opponents, but also of his dangerous disregard for the rule of law and the authority of both Congress and federal judges. His office has sued the administration more than 40 times since January, many times over funding.

    “It is not something that you should have to see, that a federal government, a president of the United States, is so contemptuous of the rule of law and is willing to break it and break it again, get told by a court that they’re violating the law, and then have to be told by a court again,” Bonta said.

    And yet, such examples abound, he said. For example, the Justice Department’s repeated attempts to strip California of crime victim funding echoed the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated attempts recently to deny the state disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding, Bonta said.

    Homeland Security officials first told states that such funding would be conditioned on their complying with immigration enforcement efforts. California and other states sued, and a federal judge rejected such preconditions as unconstitutional.

    The administration then notified the states that refused to comply, including California, that they would simply receive less money — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — while states that cooperate with immigration enforcement would receive more.

    California and other Democratic-led states sued again, arguing this week that the shifting of funds was nothing more than the administration circumventing the court’s earlier ruling against the conditioning of funds outright.

    Bonta’s office cited a similar pattern in announcing Thursday that the Trump administration had backed off major cuts to AmeriCorps funding. The win came only after successive rounds of litigation by the state and others, Bonta’s office noted, including an amended complaint accusing the administration of continuing to withhold the funding despite an earlier court order barring it from doing so.

    Bonta said such shifting strategies were the work of a “consistently and brazenly lawless and lawbreaking federal administration,” and that his office was “duty-bound” to fight back and will — as many times as it takes.

    “It can’t be that you take an action, are held accountable, a court finds that you’ve acted unlawfully, and then you just take another unlawful action to try to restrict or withhold that same funding,” he said.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said he agreed with Bonta that there is “a pattern of ignoring court orders or trying to circumvent them” on the part of the Trump administration.

    And he provided another example: a case in which he represents University of California faculty and researchers challenging Trump administration cuts to National Science Foundation funding.

    Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought talks to reporters outside the White House on Monday, accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President JD Vance.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    After a judge blocked the administration from terminating that funding, the Trump administration responded by declaring that the funds were “suspended” instead, Chemerinsky said.

    The judge then ruled the administration was violating her order against termination, he said, as “calling them suspensions rather than terminations changed nothing.”

    Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on executive powers, said Trump aggressively flexing those powers was expected. Conservative leaders have been trying to restore executive authority ever since Congress reined in the presidency after Watergate, and Trump took an aggressive approach in his first term, too, Sollenberger said.

    However, what Trump has done this term has nonetheless been stunning, Sollenberger said — the result of a sophisticated and well-planned strategy that has been given a clear runway by a Supreme Court that clearly shares a belief in an empowered executive branch.

    “It’s like watching water run down, and it tries to find cracks,” Sollenberger said. “That’s what the Trump administration is doing. It’s trying to find those cracks where it can widen the gap and exercise more and more executive power.”

    Bonta noted that the administration’s targeting of blue state funding began almost immediately after Trump took office, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo asserting that vast sums of federal funding for all sorts of programs were being frozen as the administration assessed whether the spending aligned with Trump’s policy goals.

    California and other states sued to block that move and won, but the administration wasn’t swayed from the strategy, Bonta said — as evidenced by more recent events.

    On Wednesday, as the government shutdown over Congress’ inability to pass a funding measure set in, Russell Vought — head of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Trump administration’s purse-string policies — announced on X that $8 billion in funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” was being canceled. He then listed 16 blue states where projects will be cut.

    Vought had broadly outlined his ideas for slashing government in Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for Trump’s second term, which Trump vigorously denied any connection to during his campaign but has since broadly implemented.

    On Thursday, Trump seemed to relish the opportunity, amid the shutdown, to implement more of the plan.

    “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted online. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

    Bonta said Wednesday that his office had no plans to get involved in the shutdown, which he said was caused by Trump and “for Trump to figure out.” But he said he was watching the battle closely.

    Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) chalked Vought’s latest cuts up to more illegal targeting of blue states such as California that oppose Trump politically, writing, “Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies.”

    Cities and towns have also been pushing back against Trump’s use of federal funding as political leverage. On Wednesday, Los Angeles and other cities announced a lawsuit challenging the cuts to disaster funding.

    L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto said the cuts were part of an “unprecedented weaponization” of federal funding by the Trump administration, and that she was proud to be fighting to “preserve constitutional limits on executive overreach.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Former VP Kamala Harris offers few regrets about failed presidential campaign at first L.A. book event

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    Former Vice President Kamala Harris offered a spirited defense of her short, unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid, lamented the loss of voters’ faith in institutions and urged Democrats to not become dispirited on Monday as she spoke at the first hometown celebration of her new book about her roller-coaster campaign.

    She appeared to take little responsibility for her loss to President Trump in 2024 while addressing a fawning crowd of 2,000 people at The Wiltern in Los Angeles.

    “I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” Harris said about “107 Days,” her political memoir that was released last week. “Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for reelection and three and a half months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”

    She dismissed Trump’s claims that his 2024 victory was so overwhelming that it was a clear mandate by the voters

    “And by the way, can history reflect on the fact that it was the closest presidential election?” Harris said, standing from her seat on the stage, as the audience cheered. “It is important for us to remember so that we that know where we’ve been to decide and chart where we are.”

    Trump beat Harris by more than 2.3 million votes — about 1.5% of the popular vote — but the Republican swept the electoral college vote, winning 312-226. Other presidential contests have been tighter, notably the 2000 contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote by nearly 544,000 votes but Bush won the electoral college vote 271-266 in a deeply contentious election that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Harris, faulted for failing to connect with voters about their economic pain in battleground states in the Midwest and Southwest, criticized former President Biden about his administration’s priorities. She said she would have addressed kitchen table issues before legislation about infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing.

    “I would have done the family piece first, which is affordable childcare, paid leave, extension of the child tax credit,” she said, basic issues facing Americans who “need to just get by today.”

    Harris spoke about her book in conversation with Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, the hosts of the “I’ve Had It” podcast and former cast members of the Bravo series “Sweet Home Oklahoma.”

    Attendees paid up to hundreds or thousands of dollars on the resale market for tickets to attend the event, part of a multi-city book tour that began last week in New York City. The East Coast event was disrupted by protesters about Israeli actions in Gaza. Harris is traveling across the country and overseas promoting her book.

    The former vice president’s book tour is expect to be a big money maker.

    Harris’ publisher recently added another “107 Days” event at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Oct. 28.

    The Bay Area native touched upon current news events during her appearance, which lasted shortly over an hour.

    About the impending federal government shutdown, Harris said Democrats must be clear that the fault lies squarely with Republicans because they control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

    “They are in power,” she said, arguing that her party must stand firm against efforts to cut access to healthcare, notably the Affordable Care Act.

    She also ripped into Trump for his social media post of a fake AI-generated video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The video purports to show Schumer saying that Latino and Black voters hate Democrats, so the party must provide undocumented residents free healthcare so they support the party until they learn English and “realize they hate us too.” Jeffries appears to wear a sombrero as mariachi music plays in the background.

    “It’s juvenile,” Harris said. Trump is “just a man who is unbalanced, he is incompetent and he is unhinged.”

    Harris did not touch on the issues she wrote in her book that caused consternation among Democrats, such as not selecting former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate because she did not believe Americans were ready to support a presidential ticket with a biracial woman and a gay man. She also did not mention her recounting of reaching out to Gov. Gavin Newsom after Biden decided not to seek reelection, and him not responding to her beyond saying he was out hikinG.

    Harris lamented civic and corporate leaders caving to demands from the Trump administration.

    Among those Trump targeted were law firms that did work for his perceived enemies.

    “I predicted almost everything,” she said. “What I did not predict was the capitulation of universities, law firms, media corporations be they television or newspapers. I did not predict that.”

    She said that while she worked in public service throughout her career, her interactions with leaders in the private sector led her to believe that they would be “among the guardians of our democracy.”

    “I have been disappointed, deeply deeply disappointed by people who are powerful who are bending the knee at the foot of this tyrant,” Harris said.

    Harris did not mention that her husband, Doug Emhoff, is a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher that earlier this year that reached an agreement with the White House to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal work during the Republican’s time in the White House and beyond.

    In April, the firm reached an agreement with the Trump administration, with the president saying their services would be dedicated to helping veterans, Gold Star families, law enforcement members and first responders, and that the law firm agreed to combat antisemitism and not engage in “DEI” efforts.

    Emhoff, who joined the law firm in January and also is now on the has faculty at USC , has condemned his law firm’s agreement with the administration.

    Emhoff, who was in attendance at the event and posing for pictures with Harris supporters, declined comment about the event.

    “I’m just here to support my wife,” he said.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Trump asks Supreme Court to uphold restrictions he wants to impose on birthright citizenship

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    President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setbackThe appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.“This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.The administration is appealing two cases.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

    WASHINGTON —

    President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

    Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setback

    The appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.

    Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.

    The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.

    Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.

    “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

    Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.

    “This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.

    Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

    In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

    While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.

    But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

    The administration is appealing two cases.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.

    Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.

    Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.

    The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

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  • Hegseth says Wounded Knee massacre soldiers will keep Medals of Honor

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    Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that 20 US soldiers who took part in the 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee will keep the Medals of Honor that were awarded to them.

    The move is the latest in a number of contentious actions taken by the Trump administration to reinterpret US history.

    The long debate over the events at Wounded Knee includes a dispute over its characterization as a “battle” given that, according to historical records, the US army killed about 250 Lakota Sioux people – many of whom were unarmed women and children – despite fighters in the camp having surrendered.

    Related: Native public radio braces for ‘devastating and catastrophic’ Trump budget cuts

    “We’re making it clear that [the soldiers] deserve those medals,” Hegseth said, announcing the move in a video on social media on Thursday. Calling the men “brave soldiers”, he said a review panel had concluded in a report that the medals were justly awarded. “This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate.”

    Hegseth’s Democratic predecessor at the Pentagon, former defense secretary Lloyd Austin, ordered the review of the honors in 2024 after Congress called for it in the 2022 defense bill. Announcing the review, the Pentagon said Austin wanted to “ensure no awardees were recognized for conduct inconsistent with the nation’s highest military honor”.

    But in Thursday’s video, Hegseth – who has a history of Christian nationalist sympathies – said his predecessor had been “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct”. It is unclear if the report will be made public.

    Hegseth’s move also halts a push from Democratic lawmakers to revoke medals tied to the massacre at a camp on what is now the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. For Native Americans, the massacre marked a devastating climax to the tragedy of Indigenous removals from their land.

    “We cannot be a country that celebrates and rewards horrifying acts of violence against Native people,” senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement earlier this year after reintroducing the proposed Remove the Stain Act.

    After the massacre, 19 soldiers from the seventh cavalry were awarded the Medal of Honor for their “bravery” and “gallantry” over actions ranging from rescuing fellow troops to efforts to “dislodge Sioux Indians” hiding in a ravine.

    Native Americans have long pushed for revocation of the medals. As time has gone on, the isolated site has become a place of mourning for many tribes, symbolizing the genocidal history of brutality and repression they have suffered at the hands of the US government. While Congress issued a formal apology in 1990 to the descendants of the massacre, the medals were left in place and no reparations offered.

    Thursday’s announcement is the latest move to sanitize the nation’s history taken by the Trump administration since Donald Trump signed an executive order in March titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.

    In recent months, Hegseth has reverted the names of several US army bases back to Confederate-linked names, monuments to the Confederacy and Confederate figures have been restored, and he renamed a US navy ship that honored gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

    The Trump administration has also gone after cultural institutions like Smithsonian museums for exhibits it considers “unpatriotic”, purged and rewritten federal webpages related to topics including slavery, diversity and discrimination (some of which were later restored), and cut funding to grants to institutions that honor the lives of enslaved people.

    Some historians took to social media to denounce the administration’s latest move.

    “Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a ‘battle’ rather than what it truly was,” Columbia University history professor Karl Jacoby posted on Bluesky.

    Jacoby added: “Fortunately, history does not work as Hegseth seems to believe. It is never “settled” and the government cannot (at least for now!) impose its interpretation of events on the rest of us.”

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  • Legal groups resist Trump authoritarian moves with pro bono work

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    As the Trump administration has fired federal employees and top officials for political reasons, blocked millions of dollars Congress appropriated and flouted legal norms, several legal outfits are providing crucial pro bono and other help to many individuals hurt by Donald Trump’s authoritarian actions, say lawyers involved and ex-prosecutors.

    Lowell & Associates, Democracy Defenders Fund and the Washington Litigation Group, are among the leading legal groups with clients battling to get their jobs back, avoid prosecutions, or recoup millions of dollars that have been illegally blocked, say attorneys with the trio and experts.

    Veteran white-collar lawyers, ex-justice department (DoJ) prosecutors and other legal talent at these firms are representing prominent figures Trump’s administration has fired to settle political scores, ex-officials his administration has launched investigations into, and scores of other officials ousted without cause, say lawyers.

    Former DoJ prosecutors credit these smaller legal outfits for challenging administration moves that jeopardize the rule of law

    “The creation of these new entities reflects a broad-based professional revulsion at the ongoing efforts to undermine the rule of law by the Trump administration, including turning the DoJ into an extension of the White House rather than a department that is faithful to the facts and the law,” said ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich.

    These newer legal outfits in some ways are also helping fill a vacuum created by Trump’s pressure tactics on several major law firms with some Democratic ties which led them to agree to provide hundreds of millions in pro bono help to administration priorities.

    Nine big law firms, including Paul Weiss and Kirkland & Ellis, struck deals with Trump in the first months of his second term to avert an executive order that would have made it very hard for them to represent their clients. In total, they agreed to provide almost $1bn in pro bono help to administration priorities including fighting antisemitism and veterans issues, the New York Times has reported.

    A few lawyers have left these large firms including Skadden Arps and Milbank in recent months to join the smaller legal outfits now challenging Trump administration actions.

    Consider Lowell & Associates which was started this spring by prominent white collar attorney Abbe Lowell and has quickly amassed several very high profile clients suing the Trump administration in cases involving alleged politically motivated firings.

    Lowell, in tandem with an attorney for the FBI Agents Association, filed a major lawsuit on 10 September against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and other senior administration officials on behalf of two ex-senior officials, Brian Driscoll Jr and Steven Jensen, who were canned early this year they alleged in a politically driven purge.

    Separately, Lowell teamed up with Democracy Defenders Fund in August to challenge Trump’s efforts to fire Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook, as Trump sought to exert control over the historically independent Fed.

    Two courts this month ruled against the administration which temporarily blocked Cook’s firing and allowed her to stay in her post for a pivotal Fed meeting on 16 and 17 September; the administration on the 18th appealed its case to the supreme court.

    On another legal front, Democracy Defenders Fund won a major court ruling on behalf of AmeriCorps which it represented as counsel: a district court in July ruled that hundreds of millions of dollars Congress appropriated, but the administration nixed for AmeriCorps, should be restored.

    Meanwhile, the Washington Litigation Group which was launched in August has already been tapped by about a dozen fired DoJ employees for legal help. It was formed by an elite group of veteran DC legal figures including former senior DoJ official Peter Keisler, retired DC judge Ellen Segal Huvelle and well-known white-collar lawyer Tom Green, who serve on an advisory steering committee.

    Legal battles mounted by this trio and others involving attorneys with Democracy Forward and the Alden Law Group have helped spur a major surge in lawsuits against the administration that the New York Times in July pegged at over 400.

    Given the Trump administration’s widespread attacks on the rule of law, the legal battles facing these new firms and their clients are daunting and the dozens of clients they represent vary considerably, say firm leaders.

    “Week after chaotic week, we are seeing an onslaught of authoritarian actions, from dismantling government agencies, to firing public servants who refuse to toe the Maga line, to militarizing the police in Washington DC” said Susan Corke, the executive director of the Democracy Defenders Fund.

    “The foundations of our democracy are being chipped away in real time, and we are facing a congressional majority that refuses to act as a check on executive power. That is why legal pushback is so critical right now. The courts remain one of the last places where truth, accountability, and the rule of law still matter … We are standing up for the principle that no one, not even a president, is above the law.”

    Corke’s points are underscored by the big legal battles that the Fund has been waging.

    In February, for instance, the Fund filed a lawsuit challenging the dismantling of USAID under the appointments clause because of the key role played by multi billionaire Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”. The lawsuit is now a class action on behalf of thousands of USAID workers who have lost their jobs.

    The Fund, founded in 2023 by ex-ambassador Norman Eisen who serves as its executive chair, also conducts investigations in matters ranging from Trump’s ties to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to the Trump family’s enormously lucrative stakes in cryptocurrency ventures.

    To tackle other major legal battles sparked by Trump administration actions, Lowell created his small eponymous firm after leaving the much larger firm of Winston & Strawn where his high-profile clients included former president Joe Biden’s son Hunter, as well as Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

    In a statement when the firm launched, Lowell said its mission would entail defending clients including institutions, individuals and others that are “facing politicized investigations, civil and administrative actions”.

    Lowell’s firm has been on a roll signing up several leading figures who the Trump administration has either fired or tried to oust. Lowell has been representing Susan Monarez, the ex director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was fired by the White House last month: Monarez told a Senate panel on 17 September that her firing came after health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a well-known vaccine sceptic, pressured her unsuccessfully to oust career scientists and pre approve vaccine recommendations for the public.

    In another high-stakes battle, Lowell and Democracy Defenders Fund filed successfully for a temporary restraining order with DC federal court on 2 September to block Trump’s firing of Cook on the grounds that he doesn’t have the authority to do so.

    Another client is the New York attorney general ,Letitia James, who the justice department has been investigating for alleged mortgage fraud which James has denied. Trump has long deemed James a political foe for bringing a successful civil fraud case against Trump’s real estate empire last year with a $500m penalty. The penalty was overturned last month, but Trump and his two eldest sons remain barred from serving in leadership posts for a few years.

    Last month too Lowell was hired to represent former Trump national security adviser John Bolton who became a leading critic of Trump at the end of his first term and wrote a hard hitting book about his tenure after Trump ousted him. The FBI recently raided his home amid allegations of retaining classified records.

    “Any thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Ambassador Bolton,” Lowell said in a 4 September statement that was the first public response from Bolton’s team related to the substance of the search.

    Lowell’s firm has also teamed up with well-known lawyer Mark Zaid to represent three fired DoJ employees; and Lowell is representing Zaid, who has prominent whistleblower clients and whose security clearance was revoked by Trump.

    Lowell’s small firm is staffed with several veteran attorneys who left Winston & Strawn and Skadden Arps after the latter firm cut a deal with the administration to avoid its crackdown on the legal profession.

    Meanwhile, the even newer Washington Litigation Group is relying on four attorneys to handle its growing volume of cases, said steering committee member and senior counsel Nathaniel Zelinsky.

    The firm’s other lawyers are James Pearce and Mary Dohrmann, who were part of special counsel Jack Smith’s team that brought charges against Trump for election subversion drive after his 2020 election loss and his retention of hundreds of classified documents after he left office, and DoJ veteran Samantha Bateman.

    “In an environment where the executive branch has targeted law firms, the WLG stands ready to provide pro bono representation for those seeking to vindicate the rule of law,” said Pearce.

    The firm has already filed a successful amicus brief on behalf of the Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey challenging Trump’s naming of Alina Habba, an ex-defense lawyer for Trump, to be US attorney for New Jersey after a very brief stint as interim US attorney.

    In late August, a federal judge ruled in their favor declaring that Habba’s appointment was illegal which the government quickly appealed.

    “The president’s efforts to install Alina Habba – like his attempt to purge the civil service of non-partisan public servants–are designed to mold the government into his image and undermine the rule of law,” said Zelinsky.

    The firm has also been representing about a dozen justice department officials and employees who have been fired, often without cause or explanation, since Trump took office again. One such client is Tara Twomey, a career civil servant who was director of the executive office of the US Trustee program at DoJ which oversees bankruptcy cases and private trustees for about two years until her March firing.

    “The legal issue in these cases involving fired DoJ employees is not just limited to them,” said Zelinsky. “The question is whether the President can fire every single employee in the Federal government – down to the person sweeping the floors – in violation of the laws Congress passed ensuring a professional, non-partisan civil service.”

    Former DoJ officials say these newer legal shops are badly needed to counter administration attacks on the rule of law.

    “The DoJ and the FBI are targeting people rather than crimes, and there is a vast need for lawyers to represent individuals and institutions that are under attack by the administration on multiple fronts,” said Bromwich.

    A senior counsel with Steptoe, Bromwich has represented pro bono some clients ousted at DoJ including the former pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who has been battling to get her job back with help from Democracy Defenders Fund and others.

    Similarly, Daniel Richman, a Columbia law professor and ex-federal prosecutor, said: “It’s heartening but not surprising that a number of respected lawyers have put political differences aside to defend the governmental institutions they value and the individual government officials who have fallen victim to the Trump administration’s assaults on those institutions.

    “Any retaliation by the administration against those lawyers or their clients may hurt them economically, but I’d like to think the profession values those with the law on their side who stand up to lawless and often vindictive executive action.”

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  • In a dizzying few days, Trump ramps up attacks on political opponents and 1st Amendment

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    WASHINGTON — President Trump has harnessed the weight of his office in recent days to accelerate a campaign of retribution against his perceived political enemies and attacks on 1st Amendment protections.

    In the last week alone, Trump replaced a U.S. attorney investigating two of his political adversaries with a loyalist and openly directed the attorney general to find charges to file against them.

    His Federal Communications Commission chairman hinted at punitive actions against networks whose journalists and comedians run afoul of the president.

    Trump filed a $15-billion lawsuit against the New York Times, only to have it thrown out by a judge.

    The acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles asked the Secret Service to investigate a social media post by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office.

    The Pentagon announced it was imposing new restrictions on reporters who cover the U.S. military.

    The White House officially labeled “antifa,” a loose affiliation of far-left extremists, as “domestic terrorists” — a designation with no basis in U.S. law — posing a direct challenge to free speech protections. And it said lawmakers concerned with the legal predicate for strikes on boats in the Caribbean should simply get over it.

    An active investigation into the president’s border advisor over an alleged bribery scheme involving a $50,000 payout was quashed by the White House itself.

    Trump emphasized his partisan-fueled dislike of his political opponents during a Sunday memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who he said “did not hate his opponents.”

    “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.”

    It has been an extraordinary run of attacks using levers of power that have been seen as sacred arbiters of the public trust for decades, scholars and historians say.

    The assault is exclusively targeting Democrats, liberal groups and establishment institutions, just as the administration moves to shield its allies.

    Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney in Virginia, resigned Friday after facing pressure from the Trump administration to bring criminal charges against New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James over alleged mortgage fraud. In a social media post later that day, Trump claimed he had “fired” Siebert.

    A few hours later, on Saturday, Trump said he nominated White House aide Lindsey Halligan to take over Siebert’s top prosecutorial role in Virginia, saying she was “tough” and “loyal.”

    Later that day, Trump demanded in a social media post addressed to “Pam” — in reference to Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — that she prosecute James, former FBI Director James Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

    “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s remarks, saying Monday that the president is “rightfully frustrated” and that he “wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abuse their power, who abuse their oath of office, to target the former president and then candidate for the highest office in the land.”

    “It is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponize the Department of Justice, and nobody knows what that looks like more than President Trump,” Leavitt told reporters.

    As the president called for prosecution of his political opponents, it was reported that Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, was the subject of an undercover FBI case that was later shut down by Trump administration officials. Homan, according to MSNBC, accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover agents after he indicated to them he could get them government contracts.

    At Monday’s news briefing, Leavitt said that Homan did not take the money and that the investigation was “another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters.”

    “The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong,” she said.

    Some see the recent actions as an erosion of an expected firewall between the Department of Justice and the White House, as well as a shift in the idea of how criminal investigation should be launched.

    “If the Department of Justice and any prosecution entity is functioning properly, then that entity is investigating crimes and not people,” said John Hasnas, a law professor at Georgetown University.

    The Trump administration has also begun a military campaign against vessels crossing the Caribbean Sea departing from Venezuela that it says are carrying narcotics and drug traffickers. But the targeted killing of individuals at sea is raising concern among legal scholars that the administration’s operation is extrajudicial, and Democratic lawmakers, including Schiff, have introduced a bill in recent days asserting the ongoing campaign violates the War Powers Resolution.

    Political influence has long played a role with federal prosecutors who are political appointees, Hasnas said, but under “the current situation it’s magnified greatly.”

    “The interesting thing about the current situation is that the Trump administration is not even trying to hide it,” he said.

    Schiff said he sees it as an effort to “try to silence and intimidate.” In July, Trump accused Schiff — who led the first impeachment inquiry into Trump — of committing mortgage fraud, which Schiff has denied.

    “What he wants to try to do is not just go after me and Letitia James or Lisa Cook, but rather send a message that anyone who stands up to him on anything, anyone who has the audacity to call out his corruption will be a target, and they will go after you,” Schiff said in an interview Sunday.

    Trump campaigned in part on protecting free speech, especially that of conservatives, who he claimed had been broadly censored by the Biden administration and “woke” leftist culture in the U.S. Many of his most ardent supporters — including billionaire Elon Musk and now-Vice President JD Vance — praised Trump as a champion of free speech.

    However, since Trump took office, his administration has repeatedly sought to silence his critics, including in the media, and crack down on speech that does not align with his politics.

    And in the wake of Kirk’s killing on Sept. 10, those efforts have escalated into an unprecedented attack on free speech and expression, according to constitutional scholars and media experts.

    “The administration is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st Amendment,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School.

    “We are at an unprecedented place in American history in terms of the targeting of free press and the exercise of free speech,” said Ken Paulson, former editor in chief of USA Today and now director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

    “We’ve had periods in American history like the Red Scare, in which Americans were to turn in neighbors who they thought leaned left, but this is a nonstop, multifaceted, multiplatform attack on all of our free speech rights,” Paulson said. “I’m actually quite stunned at the velocity of this and the boldness of it.”

    Bondi recently railed against “hate speech” — which the Supreme Court has previously defended — in an online post, suggesting the Justice Department will investigate those who speak out against conservatives.

    FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney, with repercussions if they did not yank Jimmy Kimmel off the air after Kimmel made comments about Kirk’s alleged killer that Carr found distasteful. ABC swiftly suspended Kimmel’s show, though Disney announced Monday that it would return Tuesday.

    The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it will require news organizations to agree not to disclose any information the government has not approved for release and revoke the press credentials of those who publish sensitive material without approval.

    Critics of the administration, free speech organizations and even some conservative pundits who have long criticized the “cancel culture” of the progressive left have spoken out against some of those policies. Scholars have too, saying the amalgam of actions by the administration represent a dangerous departure from U.S. law and tradition.

    “What unites all of this is how blatantly inconsistent it is with the 1st Amendment,” Chemerinsky said.

    Chemerinsky said lower courts have consistently pushed back against the administration’s overreaches when it comes to protected speech, and he expects they will continue to do so.

    He also said that, although the Supreme Court has frequently sided with the president in disputes over his policy decisions, it has also consistently defended freedom of speech, and he hopes it will continue to do so if some of the free speech policies above reach the high court.

    “If there’s anything this court has said repeatedly, it’s that the government can’t prevent or stop speech based on the viewpoint expressed,” Chemerinsky said.

    Paulson said that American media companies must refuse to obey and continue to cover the Trump administration and the Pentagon as aggressively as ever, and that average Americans must recognize the severity of the threat posed by such censorship and speak out against it, no matter their political persuasion.

    “This is real — a full-throttle assault on free speech in America,” Paulson said. “And it’s going to be up to the citizenry to do something about it.”

    Chemerinsky said defending free speech should be an issue that unites all Americans, not least because political power changes hands.

    “It’s understandable that those in power want to silence the speech that they don’t like, but the whole point of the 1st Amendment is to protect speech we don’t like,” he said. “We don’t need the 1st Amendment to protect the speech we like.”

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    Ana Ceballos, Michael Wilner, Kevin Rector

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  • Bonta demands FCC chair ‘stop his campaign of censorship’ following Kimmel suspension

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of unlawfully intimidating television broadcasters into toeing a conservative line in favor of President Trump, and urged him to reverse course.

    In a letter to Carr, Bonta specifically cited ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air after Kimmel made comments about the killing of close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, and Carr demanded ABC’s parent company Disney “take action” against the late-night host.

    Bonta wrote that California “is home to a great many artists, entertainers, and other individuals who every day exercise their right to free speech and free expression,” and that Carr’s demands of Disney threatened their 1st Amendment rights.

    “As the Supreme Court held over sixty years ago and unanimously reaffirmed just last year, ‘the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,’” Bonta wrote.

    Carr and Trump have both denied playing a role in Kimmel’s suspension, alleging instead that it was due to his show having poor ratings.

    After Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would be returning to ABC, Bonta said he was “pleased to hear ABC is reversing course on its capitulation to the FCC’s unlawful threats,” but that his “concerns stand.”

    He rejected Trump and Carr’s denials of involvement, and accused the administration of “waging a dangerous attack on those who dare to speak out against it.”

    “Censoring and silencing critics because you don’t like what they say — be it a comedian, a lawyer, or a peaceful protester — is fundamentally un-American,” while such censorship by the U.S. government is “absolutely chilling,” Bonta said.

    Bonta called on Carr to “stop his campaign of censorship” and commit to defending the right to free speech in the U.S., which he said would require “an express disavowal” of his previous threats and “an unambiguous pledge” that he will not use the FCC “to retaliate against private parties” for speech he disagrees with moving forward.

    “News outlets have reported today that ABC will be returning Mr. Kimmel’s show to its broadcast tomorrow night. While it is heartening to see the exercise of free speech ultimately prevail, this does not erase your threats and the resultant suppression of free speech from this past week or the prospect that your threats will chill free speech in the future,” Bonta wrote.

    After Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said during a monologue that the U.S. had “hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

    Carr responded on a conservative podcast, saying, “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    Two major owners of ABC affiliates dropped the show, after which ABC said it would be “preempted indefinitely.”

    Both Kirk’s killing and Kimmel’s suspension — which followed the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” by CBS — kicked off a tense debate about freedom of speech in the U.S. Both Kimmel and Colbert are critics of Trump, while Kirk was an ardent supporter.

    Constitutional scholars and other 1st amendment advocates said the administration and Carr have clearly been exerting inappropriate pressure on media companies.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said Carr’s actions were part of a broad assault on free speech by the administration, which “is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st amendment.”

    Summer Lopez, the interim co-chief executive of PEN America, said this is “a dangerous moment for free speech” in the U.S. because of a host of Trump administration actions that are “pretty clear violations of the 1st Amendment” — including Carr’s threats but also statements about “hate speech” by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and new Pentagon restrictions on journalists reporting on the U.S. military.

    She said Kimmel’s return to ABC showed that “public outrage does make a difference,” but that “it’s important that we generate that level of public outrage when the targeting is of people who don’t have that same prominence.”

    Carr has also drawn criticism from conservative corners, including from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. He recently said on his podcast that he found it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

    Cruz said he works closely with Carr, whom he likes, but that what Carr said was “dangerous as hell” and could be used down the line “to silence every conservative in America.”

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  • State lawmakers ask Trump administration to end its review of state regs

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    Crews install portraits of state capitol buildings ahead of the National Conference of State Legislatures annual summit on Aug. 4 in Boston. NCSL has asked the Trump administration to stop its review of state laws it says are overly burdensome on business. (Photo by Kevin Hardy/Stateline)

    State lawmakers from across the country are asking the Trump administration to stop its review of state laws it says are overly burdensome on businesses.

    Earlier this week, the National Conference of State Legislatures wrote to federal leaders, citing bipartisan concern about recent federal actions that, in its view, attempt to undermine the authority of state governments.

    “Our members have raised concerns that the federal government does not pay close enough attention to the state impact of their decisions. State laws and regulations are foundational to America’s economic and social infrastructure,” the organization wrote.

    The National Conference of State Legislatures, which represents state legislatures and legislative staff across the country, was responding to an August 15 announcement from the Justice Department and the National Economic Council that they would be seeking to identify state laws that “significantly and adversely affect the national economy or interstate economic activity.”

    In soliciting public comment, the Trump administration referenced the possibility of using existing federal authority or new legislation to preempt state regulations.

    State laws and regulations are foundational to America’s economic and social infrastructure.

    – The National Conference of State Legislatures

    The Justice Department announcement of the review cited an ongoing feud over state animal welfare standards. In recent years, major agricultural industry players and congressional Republicans have taken aim at efforts such as California’s Proposition 12, which requires farms to meet certain standards to provide animals freedom of movement, including cage-free enclosures and minimum floor space.

    California’s voter initiative also bars retailers from selling animal products raised in other states that don’t meet California’s standards — viewed as a major imposition by agriculture interests across the country.

    In July, the Trump administration sued California, arguing its regulations were driving up the cost of eggs across the country because of the state’s outsize role in the national economy.

    “It is one thing if California passes laws that affect its own State, it is another when those laws affect other States in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” U.S. Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a statement at the time.

    In its response to the administration’ recent solicitation, NCSL noted that the Supreme Court in 2023 upheld California’s Proposition 12.

    NCSL said the Justice Department review would contravene the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says powers not specifically delegated to the federal government or prohibited by the Constitution are reserved for states.

    The organization of state lawmakers argues that the foundational concept of federalism allows states to enact regulations and laws that are more responsive and adaptable to local citizens.

    “NCSL urges the Department of Justice to withdraw this unprecedented and broad attempt to undermine state authority,” the organization wrote.

    The letter was signed by four NCSL officers — two Democratic and two Republican state lawmakers.

    Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

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  • President Trump deploys the National Guard to Memphis

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    President Trump said this task force will replicate what is happening on the streets of Washington DC. The president said the goal is to essentially put an end to crime in Memphis and mirror the actions taking place in the nation’s capital. The memorandum President Trump signed on Monday did not include details on when troops would be deployed or exactly what his promised surge in law enforcement efforts would actually look like. Tennessee’s governor embraced the deployment while the mayor of Memphis is not thrilled with the plan. Crime that’s going on not only in Memphis in many cities and we’re gonna take care of all of them step by step just like we did in DC. We’ll have folks without training interacting with our citizenry, and there’s *** chance that that will compromise our due process rights. The president also mentioned he’s still looking to send National Guard troops to more Democratic-led cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, and Saint Louis. In Washington, I’m Rachel Herzheimer.

    President Trump deploys the National Guard to Memphis

    President Donald Trump plans to send National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee, as part of a federal initiative to combat crime, drawing varied responses from local leaders.

    Updated: 4:56 AM PDT Sep 16, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    President Donald Trump is sending National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee, as part of his efforts to combat crime and illegal immigration.Trump said the task force will replicate what is happening on the streets in Washington, D.C., with the goal of reducing crime in Memphis. “It’s very important because of the crime that’s going on, not only in Memphis, and many cities that we’re going to take care of all of them, Trump said during an Oval Office event with members of his administration, and Tennessee’s governor and two Republican senators. “Step by step, just like we did in DC.” The memorandum President Trump signed on Monday did not specify when the troops would be deployed or detail the nature of the increased law enforcement efforts. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has embraced the deployment, but Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris expressed concerns. “We’ll have folks without training interacting with our citizenry, and there’s a chance that will compromise our due process rights,” Harris said.”I think that the National Guard is a short-term solution, and let’s be honest, these guys, these men and women, have jobs and families just like we do, and they would probably rather not be here as well,” Memphis city council member J. Ford Canale said.The president mentioned that he is still looking to send National Guard troops to more Democratic-led cities, such as New Orleans, Baltimore, and St. Louis.It looked like Chicago was going to be the next city to see troops hit the streets. The administration faced resistance from the Governor of Illinois and other local authorities. On Monday, President Trump insisted Chicago would probably be next to see National Guard troops.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    President Donald Trump is sending National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee, as part of his efforts to combat crime and illegal immigration.

    Trump said the task force will replicate what is happening on the streets in Washington, D.C., with the goal of reducing crime in Memphis.

    “It’s very important because of the crime that’s going on, not only in Memphis, and many cities that we’re going to take care of all of them, Trump said during an Oval Office event with members of his administration, and Tennessee’s governor and two Republican senators. “Step by step, just like we did in DC.”

    The memorandum President Trump signed on Monday did not specify when the troops would be deployed or detail the nature of the increased law enforcement efforts.

    Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has embraced the deployment, but Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris expressed concerns. “We’ll have folks without training interacting with our citizenry, and there’s a chance that will compromise our due process rights,” Harris said.

    “I think that the National Guard is a short-term solution, and let’s be honest, these guys, these men and women, have jobs and families just like we do, and they would probably rather not be here as well,” Memphis city council member J. Ford Canale said.

    The president mentioned that he is still looking to send National Guard troops to more Democratic-led cities, such as New Orleans, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

    It looked like Chicago was going to be the next city to see troops hit the streets. The administration faced resistance from the Governor of Illinois and other local authorities.

    On Monday, President Trump insisted Chicago would probably be next to see National Guard troops.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

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  • Stitt appoints three new officials to fill roles in his administration

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    Gov. Kevin Stitt speaks at a press conference on June 5, 2025 at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Emma Murphy/Oklahoma Voice)

    OKLAHOMA CITY — Gov. Kevin Stitt on Thursday appointed three officials to his administration, all of whom he has previously named to other positions in Oklahoma state government. 

    Stitt appointed Donelle Harder as Oklahoma Secretary of State, David Ostrowe as chief operating officer and Dustin Hilliary as his senior advisor. 

    “We successfully launched this administration by bringing a fresh set of eyes from Oklahoma’s business community, and we will finish the same way,” Stitt said in a statement. “These three outstanding Oklahomans bring diverse strengths: Dustin’s trusted leadership and negotiation prowess, David’s operational acumen, and Donelle’s strategic vision.”

    The appointments follow the resignations of Josh Cockroft, who serves as secretary of state and Stitt’s chief policy advisor, and Rick Rose, the head of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and Oklahoma’s chief operating officer. Cockcroft’s resignation is effective Oct. 2 while Rose plans to depart Sept. 26.

    Donelle Harder is pictured. (Provided by the Oklahoma Governor’s Office)

    Harder previously served as Stitt’s senior advisor and deputy Secretary of State and worked as his spokesperson and campaign manager. She also previously worked as former U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe’s spokesperson. 

    In the private sector, she sold her regional public relations and marketing firm to Pinkston in 2022, and she became one of the company’s senior vice presidents. 

    “I’m honored to serve as Secretary of State and support Governor Stitt’s administration again,” Harder said in a statement. “I look forward to sharpening our strategic approach and ensuring this administration remains effective and focused on delivering good government for the people of Oklahoma.”

    Her appointment is effective Oct. 1. 

    Ostrowe will return to Stitt’s administration as the chief operating officer and secretary to “drive cabinet coordination and support agency directors.”

    David Ostrowe is pictured. (Provided by the Oklahoma Governor’s Office)

    David Ostrowe is pictured. (Provided by the Oklahoma Governor’s Office)

    He currently serves as president and CEO of O&M Restaurant Group leading brand expansions across states. 

    During Stitt’s first term, Ostrowe served as Oklahoma’s first Secretary of Digital Transformation and Administration. He was indicted by former Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter in late 2020 for allegedly bribing a state official. Ostrowe was accused of threatening to cut funding from the state Tax Commission if commissioners didn’t waive penalties and interests on a tax debt. 

    Current Attorney General Gentner Drummond dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning they can’t be refiled, and apologized to Ostrowe on behalf of the state after he took office. He said Ostrowe should not have been indicted and did nothing wrong.

    “In Governor Stitt’s first administration, we worked with passion to deliver digital transformation and make government more efficient and transparent,” Ostrowe said in a statement. “I am honored to return as COO to help finish that mission and continue advancing good government for all Oklahomans.”

    Dustin Hilliary is pictured. (Provided by the Oklahoma Governor’s Office)

    Dustin Hilliary is pictured. (Provided by the Oklahoma Governor’s Office)

    Hilliary, Stitt’s new senior advisor and chief negotiator, also serves as the vice chair of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. It was not immediately clear if he would continue serving in both roles. 

    He is co-CEO of Hilliary Communications, which provides telephone and broadband service to customers in Oklahoma, Texas and Iowa. Hilliary is also co-publisher of the Hilliary Media Group, a media holding company, and operates a real estate development company.

    “It is an honor to serve Oklahoma and to work alongside Governor Stitt in his final term to advance policies with the Legislature that put our state on a strong path today and for future generations,” Hilliary said in a statement.

    The salaries of all three appointees were not immediately provided by the Governor’s Office. 

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  • Military families sue Trump administration over gender-affirming care ban

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    Three military families are suing the Department of Defense over a policy that prevents military clinics or insurance from covering gender-affirming care.

    The case, Doe v. Department of Defense, was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR) on behalf of three servicemembers and their families. The plaintiffs, who are using pseudonyms, had obtained the care for their transgender children through the military health system for over a decade before the Trump administration prohibited it.

    “President Trump has illegally overstepped his authority by abruptly cutting off necessary medical care for military families,” Shannon Minter, Legal Director at NCLR, said in a statement. “This lawless directive is part of a dangerous pattern of this administration ignoring legal requirements and abandoning our servicemembers.”

    Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a rule in February banning gender-affirming medical care for trans service members as well as preventing new enlistments of individuals with a history of gender dysphoria, which stated, “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for service members are paused.”

    Hegseth’s orders were temporarily blocked by a federal court in April, with the judges finding the restrictions to be unconstitutional. Despite this, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. Stephen Ferrara issued a decision in May to move forward with the restrictions.

    The Pentagon policies came alongside Donald Trump’s executive order banning trans troops from serving in the military altogether. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the administration to enforce the ban while lawsuits against it are heard.

    “This is a sweeping reversal of military health policy and a betrayal of military families who have sacrificed for our country,” said Sarah Austin, Staff Attorney at GLAD Law. “When a servicemember is deployed and focused on the mission they deserve to know their family is taken care of. This Administration has backtracked on that core promise and put servicemembers at risk of losing access to health care their children desperately need.”

    This article originally appeared on Advocate: Military families sue Trump administration over gender-affirming care ban

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  • In a week of stumbles, Trump faces setbacks in court and abroad

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    WASHINGTON — Facing viral rumors of his imminent death, President Trump emerged in the Oval Office on Tuesday alive and scowling. Core tenets of his economic policies were under strain. Flashy diplomatic overtures to Moscow appeared to be backfiring. And a scandal over a notorious sexual abuser that has fixated his base was roaring back to life in Washington.

    It was a challenging week for the president, whose aggressive approach to his second term has begun to hit significant roadblocks with the public and the courts, and overseas, with longstanding U.S. adversaries Trump once hoped to coax to his will.

    The president called for an expedited Supreme Court review of an appellate court ruling that he had exceeded his authority by issuing sweeping global tariffs last spring — a decision that, if left standing, could upend the foundation of his economic agenda. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued jobs numbers showing a contraction of the labor market in July, a first since the depths of the pandemic in 2020.

    New art lining a hallway in the West Wing features photographs of Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, where Trump said the Russian president had agreed to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to discuss an end to the war. Yet, three weeks on, Russia had launched its most intense bombardment of Kyiv in years, and Putin traveled to Beijing for a military parade hosted by Xi Jinping, which Russian state media used to mock the U.S. president.

    During an appearance in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, Trump said reaching a deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine has turned out to be “a little bit more difficult” than he initially thought.

    And a rare spree of bipartisanship broke out on Capitol Hill — in opposition to Trump’s causes.

    A tense hearing at the Senate Finance Committee with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid bare concern over the direction of federal vaccination policy and public health recommendations under his leadership across party lines.

    Trump declined to stand behind him wholeheartedly after the hearing. “He’s got some little different ideas,” Trump told reporters, adding: “It’s not your standard talk.”

    On Wednesday, moments after a group of more than 100 women pleaded for Trump’s help from the steps of the Capitol seeking transparency over the investigation of their alleged abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, Trump dismissed the matter as a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

    “The Department of Justice has done its job, they have given everything requested of them,” Trump repeated on Truth Social on Friday. “It’s time to end the Democrat Epstein Hoax.”

    Trump was close friends with Epstein for more than a decade. But his base has repeatedly called for the release of thousands of files in his case — and some of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress are set to vote against his wishes for a discharge petition directing the Justice Department to do so in the coming days.

    A far-right political activist released hidden camera footage this week of a Justice Department official claiming the agency would redact the names of Republicans, but not Democrats, identified in the files. In the video, the DOJ official also suggested that Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was recently moved to a lower-security prison as part of a deal to keep her quiet.

    Public support for Trump has appeared stable since July, with roughly 42% of Americans approving of his job performance across a series of high quality polls. But the end of the August recess in Washington — and the oncoming flu and COVID-19 season — could return public attention to subjects that have proved politically perilous for the president this week.

    Polls show that a majority of the president’s Republican voters support vaccines. They oppose Putin and increasingly support Ukraine. And across the political spectrum, Americans want the Epstein files released, unredacted and in full.

    A string of court losses

    The president’s agenda suffered several setbacks this week, as federal judges across the country ruled his administration had broken the law in various instances.

    In San Francisco, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of military troops in Los Angeles was illegal and barred soldiers from aiding immigration arrests in California in an order set to take effect next week.

    In Boston, a federal judge said the Trump administration broke the law when it froze billions of dollars in research funds awarded to Harvard University. In another court ruling, a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting dozens of unaccompanied migrant children to Guatemala.

    And on Friday afternoon, a federal judge stopped the Trump administration from taking away the deportation protections under Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians living in the United States.

    While the court decisions represent a snag for key portions of the administration’s agenda, the cases continue to play out in court — and could ultimately turn in favor of Trump.

    Legal experts are closely watching those decisions. In the case of the military troop deployments, for instance, some fear a reversal on appeal could ultimately hand the president broader power to send troops to American cities.

    Trump has floated additional federal deployments — to Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans — in recent days.

    Trump reacts to a bad week

    Trump greeted the waves of bad news with a characteristic mix of deflection, finger-pointing and anger.

    He warned that losing his appeal on tariff policy at the Supreme Court would render the United States a “third world country,” telling reporters, “if we don’t win that case, our country is going to suffer so greatly.” And he said he was “very disappointed” in Putin.

    After the parade in Beijing — which was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, a longstanding U.S. ally now ostracized by Trump’s tariffs — drew widespread media attention, Trump wrote on social media that the countries were conspiring together against the United States.

    “We’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China,” he wrote.

    In another lengthy social media post on Friday, Trump accused Democrats of fueling the Epstein “hoax” as a means to “distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

    Days earlier, survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse publicly pressured lawmakers to back a legislative measure to force the release of the sex trafficking investigation into the late financier.

    “This is about ending secrecy wherever abuse of power takes root,” said Anouska De Georgiou, who was among the Epstein victims who held a news conference on Capitol Hill.

    A few high-profile Republicans also broke with Trump on the Epstein issue, calling for more transparency on the investigation. Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she is willing to expose those who are tied to Epstein’s sex trafficking case.

    On a phone call with Trump on Wednesday morning, Greene suggested he meet with Epstein’s victims at the White House while they were gathered in town. He was noncommittal, the congresswoman told reporters.

    The survivors left town without a meeting. At the direction of the White House, Republican leadership continues to press Republican members to oppose efforts to release the files.

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  • Trump on possible National Guard deployment to Chicago: “We’re going in”

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    President Trump suggested Tuesday he’s planning to send National Guard troops to Chicago, in what could be the latest salvo in his controversial push to use federal forces to address crime, drawing pushback from local political leaders.

    “We’re going in. I didn’t say when, we’re going in,” Mr. Trump said in an Oval Office event, after a reporter asked if he plans to send the Guard to Chicago.

    Mr. Trump did not specify whether his administration will primarily send Guard forces or federal law enforcement agents to Chicago. He also didn’t say how many Guard troops could be deployed, or where they will hail from.

    He later suggested Baltimore could also draw a federal response.

    The president has vowed for weeks to intervene in Chicago and Baltimore, arguing the two cities have failed to contain violent crime. Chicago could be the third city to face a crackdown under the Trump administration: Thousands of Guard troops and federal agents have been deployed to the streets of Washington, D.C., since last month as part of an anti-crime initiative, and Guard forces were sent to Los Angeles in June to protect immigration agents.

    Mr. Trump said he hopes Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — a vociferous Trump critic — will call him and request that troops be sent to Chicago. But the president said: “We’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it because I have an obligation to protect this country.”

    In a press conference Tuesday, Pritzker called Mr. Trump’s comments “unhinged.”

    “No, I will not call the president asking him to send troops to Chicago,” he said.

    Pritzker said he expects federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies to surge in Chicago in the coming days. He said the president could then “use any excuse” to deploy military personnel.

    The governor said his administration is “ready to fight troop deployments in court.”

    Any Guard deployment to Chicago would likely draw legal pushback.

    The D.C. National Guard is controlled by the president, but the 50 states’ Guard forces are typically run by governors. Mr. Trump called members of the California National Guard into federal service without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s permission by invoking a law that applies to rebellions or situations where the president can’t enforce the law with “regular forces.”

    Newsom sued the Trump administration over the move. An appeals court ruled that Mr. Trump likely had the right to call up the California National Guard, but a lower court judge on Tuesday ruled the deployment violated a 19th century law prohibiting the military from being used for domestic law enforcement.

    Trump calls Chicago a “mess” — Pritzker calls his claims “absurd”

    The president has zeroed in on cracking down on crime in the nation’s major cities, beginning with the effort in D.C. — despite data showing crime has declined in the city in recent years.

    When Mr. Trump announced the crackdown in the nation’s capital, he said the effort “will go further,” saying the administration is “starting very strongly with D.C.” and suggesting it could then move to other cities. Since then, he has publicly lashed out over Chicago’s murder rate.

    “We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” Mr. Trump said last month. “We’re not going to lose our cities over this.”

    The president later praised the National Guard’s work with the police in D.C., saying, “After we do this, we’ll go to another location, and we’ll make it safe, also.”

    “Chicago’s a mess, you have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent,” Mr. Trump said last month. “And we’ll straighten that one out, probably next – that will be our next one after this.”

    The president predicted that, within a week of a federal intervention in Chicago, “We will have no crime in Chicago just like we have no crime in D.C.”

    In Tuesday’s press conference, Pritzker said “there is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops.” He called Mr. Trump’s characterization of crime in Chicago “absurd” and pointed to recent reductions in homicides, shootings and other violent crimes according to city statistics.

    “One violent crime is too many, and we have more work to do,” Pritzker said. “But we have made important progress on safety that Trump is now jeopardizing.”

    Teens surprise math world with Pythagorean Theorem trigonometry proof | 60 Minutes

    Slim margin leaves Republicans in need of Democratic votes to avoid government shutdown

    Trump on potential National Guard deployment in Chicago: “We’re going in”

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  • Padilla, Schiff request detailed breakdown of National Guard, Marine deployments in L.A.

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    U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff have sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting a detailed breakdown of military deployments to Los Angeles amid recent immigration enforcement protests in the city.

    The two California Democrats wrote Monday that they wanted to know how thousands of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines were specifically used, whether and how they engaged in any law enforcement activity and how much the deployments have cost taxpayers to date.

    The deployments were made over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials, and sparked a lawsuit by the state alleging they were illegal. The letter came just hours before a federal judge agreed with the state in a ruling Tuesday that Padilla and Schiff both cheered.

    Padilla and Schiff wrote that the deployments were unnecessary and that greater detail was needed in light of similar operations now being launched or threatened in other American cities.

    “The use of the U.S. military to assist in or otherwise support immigration operations remains inappropriate, potentially a violation of the law, and harmful to the relationship between the U.S. public and the U.S. military,” they wrote.

    The Department of Defense declined to comment on the letter to The Times, saying it would “respond directly” to Padilla and Schiff.

    President Trump ordered the federalization of some 4,100 National Guard troops in California in June, as L.A. protests erupted over his administration’s immigration policies. Some 700 Marines were also deployed to the city. Most of those forces have since departed, but Padilla and Schiff said 300 Guard troops remain activated.

    Trump, Hegseth and other administration leaders have previously defended the deployments as necessary to restore law and order in L.A., defend federal buildings and protect federal immigration agents as they conduct immigration raids in local communities opposed to such enforcement efforts.

    Under questioning from members of Congress at the start of the deployments in June, Hegseth and other Defense officials estimated that the mission would last 60 days and that basic necessities such as travel, housing and food for the troops would cost about $134 million. However, the administration has not provided updated details as the operation has continued.

    Padilla and Schiff asked for specific totals on the number of California Guard troops and Marines deployed to L.A., and details as to which units they were drawn from and whether any out-of-state Guard personnel were brought in. They also asked whether any other military personnel were deployed to L.A., and how many civilian employees from the Department of Defense were assigned to the L.A. operation.

    The senators asked for a description of the “specific missions” carried out by the different units deployed to the city, and for a breakdown of military personnel who directly supported Department of Homeland Security teams, which would include Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They also asked which units were assigned to provide security at federal sites or were “placed on stand-by status outside of the immediate protest or immigration enforcement areas.”

    They asked for “the number of times and relevant detail for any cases in which [Defense] personnel made arrests, detained any individuals, otherwise exercised law enforcement authorities, or exercised use of lethal force during the operation.”

    They also asked for the total cost of all of the work to the Department of Defense and for a breakdown of costs by operation, maintenance, personnel or other accounts, and asked whether any funding used in the operation was diverted from other programs.

    Padilla and Schiff requested that the Department of Defense provide the information by Sept. 12.

    Unless it is “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” the use of military personnel for civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil is barred by law under the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law applies to U.S. Marines and to Guard troops who, like those in L.A., have been federalized.

    In its lawsuit, California argued the deployments were a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In response, the Trump administration argued that the president has the legal authority to deploy federal troops to protect federal property and personnel, such as ICE agents.

    On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled for the state, finding that the deployments did violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The judge placed his injunction on hold for 10 days, and the Trump administration is expected to appeal.

    Schiff said Trump’s “goal was not to ensure safety, but to create a spectacle,” and that the ruling affirmed those actions were “unlawful and unjustified.”

    Padilla said the ruling “confirmed what we knew all along: Trump broke the law in his effort to turn service members into his own national police force.”

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  • At Labor Day rallies, speakers decry Trump

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    Thousands of union members and others participated in marches, rallies and picnics on Labor Day throughout the Los Angeles region and across the country on Monday, decrying actions by the Trump administration that they say weaken unions and harm workers while strengthening and emboldening major corporations and the wealthy.

    A White House proclamation Monday said President Trump’s actions are “reversing decades of neglect and finally putting American Workers first” by rewriting tax laws and creating a better economic climate for businesses.

    His critics say he is undermining, in historic ways, the government and labor-union infrastructure established to protect workers — and therefore hurting individual workers.

    Participants at a massive Wilmington rally and parade — organized by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — united over a common foe: Trump.

    “Donald Trump has gone too far,” said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), as she and others linked typical Labor Day rhetoric directly to immigration raids. “On this Labor Day, we have an American president who takes parents from their children and workers from their jobs.”

    The raids are no longer about border security, Durazo said, but “about breaking the backbone of our economy and terrorizing families.”

    ”Fighting for workers’ rights means fighting for immigrant rights,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group CHIRLA.

    The Trump administration, meanwhile, marked Labor Day by extolling the American worker and calling attention to new trade policies — including widespread tariffs — intended to spur a return of manufacturing to the United States.

    “Every day, my Administration is restoring the dignity of labor and putting the American worker first,” Trump said in a Labor Day proclamation. “We are making it easier to buy American and hire American, breathing new life into our manufacturing cities, and securing fair trade deals that protect our jobs and reward our productivity. … Under my leadership, we are bringing jobs back to America — and those jobs are going to American-born workers.”

    Tariff chaos at port

    The effect of tariffs and their uneven rollout is widely debated, including within Trump’s Republican Party, although a Congress controlled by Republicans has not acted to stop them.

    Trump’s tariffs — and the threat of them — have triggered unpredictable boom-and-bust cycles at L.A.’s ports, Mickey Chavez, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Southern California District Council, said Monday.

    Standing with his French bulldog Gucci under an ILWU tent after the Wilmington parade, the union foreman described how the mood has fluctuated dramatically at the nearby union hall where ILWU members wait for work.

    “It’s been chaotic, more than anything, with the tariffs,” Chavez said as smoke from a barbecue a few tents over curled past his ILWU beret. “Either the workers really get a lot of work because they’re trying to beat the tariffs, or then [Trump] sets out more tariffs and the work slows down.”

    The uncertainty has made it difficult for workers to plan, particularly those at the lowest level, who are most affected by slowdowns.

    “If he sends out a tweet or makes a decision, we never know if there’s going to be work or not, so it’s been in flux,” the fourth-generation ILWU member said.

    Chavez’s great-grandfather first joined the union in the 1940s and his family has worked at the ports ever since. But he has never experienced anything like this before, where work is so dependent on the whims of a single man, he said.

    Trump bans most federal bargaining

    On the same day as his Labor Day proclamation, Trump issued an order banning collective bargaining at the International Trade Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office within the Commerce Department; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, and the National Weather Service; as well as at NASA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

    Trump cited national security concerns as providing legal grounds for the unilateral edict. The latest action follows a March order outlawing collective bargaining for a majority of the federal workforce, citing the same justification.

    Unions immediately filed suit, putting Trump’s action on hold.

    A study from the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimated that Trump’s orders have stripped 82% of civilian federal workers of their right to bargain. The total number of workers whose contracts Trump has abrogated exceeds 1 million, an estimated one-fifteenth of American workers covered by a union contract.

    In addition, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, although the National Labor Relations Act stipulates that board members serve for five years and her term was not to end until August 2028. Her dismissal has paralyzed the labor board by leaving it without a quorum. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop her dismissal as part of ongoing litigation.

    At least one speaker at the Wilmington rally spoke of the need for organized labor to support California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to redraw state congressional districts to flip as many as five seats from Republican to Democrat — a strategy to offset actions taken in Texas — urged on by Trump — to do exactly the opposite.

    Labor groups have already put millions of dollars behind it and have committed to help lead voter-mobilization efforts.

    Unlike in Texas, Newsom’s plan must be approved by voters, who will have the opportunity to support it by voting for Proposition 50.

    Passage of the measure at the ballot box is essential, state Assemblyman Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles) said at the Wilmington event, because Trump is already “destroying the fabric of the labor movement” months into his second term.

    California Republicans point out that the measure unravels reforms meant to make California districts more representative and competitive. Opponents of the retaliatory gerrymander include former California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    Festive vibes

    In Wilmington, although the thousands of union members and allies were fired up, the rally and parade retained a festive vibe.

    On a truck at the front of the procession, leaders of local and state labor groups danced with elected officials as Bob Marley and the Wailers sang about standing up for rights over a loudspeaker.

    Hammerhead cranes at the nearby port facilities dotted the horizon as classic cars turned down E Street, and posters and T-shirts in the crowd advertised membership in an alphabet soup of union locals.

    Children sharing space with political fliers in oversized wagons blew bubbles, and teenage girls from a local high school twirled pom-poms.

    At the helm of a massive shiny black truck bearing the Teamsters insignia, a driver clenched a cigar between his teeth as he steered with one hand and pulled an overhead horn with the other. Representatives from the local branch of the sheet metal workers union carried a carefully crafted, welded brown California bear in the back of their truck.

    Alongside carpenters and nurses and dockworkers, there were also representatives from a cadre of entertainment industry unions representing actors, writers and production workers.

    Rallies across the Southland and the country were united under the banner of May Day Strong, a partnership of labor, political and environmental organizations. The targets of the rallies included federal agencies carrying out immigration raids, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    “The billionaires continue to wage a war on working people, with their cronies in the administration, ICE and law enforcement backing up their attacks,” according to the organizers’ toolkit. “This Labor Day we will continue to stand strong, fighting for public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, shared prosperity over billionaire-bought politics.”

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    Julia Wick, Howard Blume

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  • International student enrollment drops in U.S. amid policy changes

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    Colleges and universities across the United States are preparing for a significant drop in international student enrollment this fall as President Donald Trump aims to overhaul the vetting and admission process for foreign students.Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA), said, “In terms of tuition dollars to universities, that will certainly be an impact, but in addition to universities, they contribute to the local economy.”The Association of International Educators says the drop in foreign enrollment could be as high as 15% this fall, which could deprive the U.S. economy of about $7 billion in spending, result in more than 60,000 fewer jobs, and strain school budgets across the country.Trump acknowledged the importance of international students last week, saying, “I like that other country students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn’t? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.” However, he has also argued that foreign students take slots from Americans and only wants those who “can love our country.”Critics claim that the administration’s policies are contributing to the decline by pressuring colleges to limit enrollment, tightening visa screening, and revoking thousands of visas, arguing that those students broke the law or supported terrorism. Trump stated, “We don’t want troublemakers here.”The administration maintains that these measures are about security, but experts like Aw argue, “This idea that international students are a national security threat is one that there is no evidence to support that at all.”Trump last week suggested doubling the number of Chinese students in American universities, a move that contrasts with his previous crackdown and has sparked criticism from conservatives.

    WASHINGTON —

    Colleges and universities across the United States are preparing for a significant drop in international student enrollment this fall as President Donald Trump aims to overhaul the vetting and admission process for foreign students.

    Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA), said, “In terms of tuition dollars to universities, that will certainly be an impact, but in addition to universities, they contribute to the local economy.”

    The Association of International Educators says the drop in foreign enrollment could be as high as 15% this fall, which could deprive the U.S. economy of about $7 billion in spending, result in more than 60,000 fewer jobs, and strain school budgets across the country.

    Trump acknowledged the importance of international students last week, saying, “I like that other country students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn’t? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.” However, he has also argued that foreign students take slots from Americans and only wants those who “can love our country.”

    Critics claim that the administration’s policies are contributing to the decline by pressuring colleges to limit enrollment, tightening visa screening, and revoking thousands of visas, arguing that those students broke the law or supported terrorism. Trump stated, “We don’t want troublemakers here.”

    The administration maintains that these measures are about security, but experts like Aw argue, “This idea that international students are a national security threat is one that there is no evidence to support that at all.”

    Trump last week suggested doubling the number of Chinese students in American universities, a move that contrasts with his previous crackdown and has sparked criticism from conservatives.

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  • Federal judge blocks Trump effort to expand fast-track deportations

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    A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to expand a fast-track deportation process, ruling that the broadened application of the sped-up process creates “a significant risk” that immigrants who may be entitled to stay in the U.S. will be hustled out of the country.

    In a decision issued Friday evening, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb granted a request by an immigrant advocacy group to put a hold on a pair of policies the administration issued in January that made millions more immigrants eligible for expulsion from the U.S. under a process known as “expedited removal.”

    For most of the past two decades, the fast-track deportation process was limited to foreigners intercepted within 100 miles of a U.S. land border and within two weeks of entering the U.S. However, in 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term, the policy was expanded to apply anywhere in the U.S. and to any unauthorized immigrant who cannot show they have been in the country for more than two years.

    The Biden administration rolled the policy back, but Trump put it back in place when he returned to office in January.

    Cobb said foreigners impacted by the expansion “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment.”

    “When it exponentially expanded the population subject to expedited removal, the Government did not, however, in any way adapt its procedures to this new group of people,” wrote Cobb, a Biden appointee based in Washington. “But when it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process.”

    Cobb described as “startling” and “extraordinary” the Trump administration’s claim that foreigners who have lived in the U.S. for years have no due process rights to fight their deportation beyond whatever process Congress has authorized. Cobb said the urgency of the need for relief in the case was underscored by the Trump administration’s adoption of a new, controversial tactic under which immigrants’ ordinary immigration court proceedings are dismissed at a hearing and the immigrants are then arrested and put into thefast-track deportation process.

    Cobb’s ruling takes effect immediately. She denied a request by the administration to put it on hold for two weeks to allow Justice Department lawyers to seek relief from a higher court.

    Earlier this month, Cobb blocked the use of the “expedited removal” process against hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the U.S. in recent years through so-called immigration parole programs.

    Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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