Buffeted by multiple court rulings overturning actions taken by his administration, Donald Trump took to Truth Social in the wee hours of Saturday morning to lash out at the legal system.
On Thursday, Trump-nominated U.S. District Judge Fernandez Rodriguez permanently blocked the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security from transferring or removing Venezuelans held under the Alien Enemies Act in the Southern District of Texas.
Judge Rodriguez wrote, “The court concludes that as a matter of law, the executive branch cannot rely on the A.E.A., based on the proclamation, to detain the named petitioners and the certified class, or to remove them from the country."
That, apparently, set off the president who fired off an attack on his social media platform.
Early Saturday, Trump wrote, "Can it be so that Judges aren’t allowing the USA to Deport Criminals, including Murderers, out of our Country and back to where they came from? If this is so, our Country, as we know it, is finished! Americans will have to get used to a very different, crime filled, LIFE."
"This is not what our Founders had in mind!!!" he insisted.
A progressive Texas Democrat raised some eyebrows late Friday on CNN, telling anchor Kaitlan Collins her Republican colleagues made "absolutely insane" moves behind closed doors this week.
"I just wonder what you make of how this is playing out among Republicans," Collins said, introducing her guest. "Because Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed this, he praised it. But we heard from several Republicans who said they didn't like it — Senator Roger Wicker said that the president's advisers were apparently not listening because of the Pentagon’s spending; Senator Mitch McConnell said it was 'material neglect.' Susan Collins called it late and expressed concern over those cuts as well. What do you think is going to happen here?"
Crockett bluntly replied she has "no idea" and said she feels lawmakers in both chambers aren't listening to their constituents, who she said are outspoken about their "pain."
She then made a notable statement about what's happening in those discussions.
"It's interesting — as we are going through reconciliation, we had a reconciliation markup in Oversight as well as Judiciary. So I had a very long night on Wednesday. And to listen to them — the things that they were not willing to say they were okay with cutting, or the things they were willing to cut — right? It's absolutely insane."
Democrats on the House Budget Committee are ensuring that every district is listed out with the number of people who will be impacted by any Medicaid cuts, as well as the number of people impacted by cuts to supplemental nutrition.
She also questioned why defense spending continues to rise despite failing the last seven audits, and as those most vulnerable are poised to get "hurt the most."
"It seems like they do whatever [Donald Trump] wants them to do at all times, right?" she later added. "Like, behind closed doors, they will talk about how these things are crazy. You can find plenty of Republicans that will tell you that these tariffs are a problem. They will tell you that. And they know that it's a problem."
Crockett asserted her Republican colleagues are actively avoiding town halls, knowing the MAGA agenda is deeply unpopular.
"This is exactly why, if you tune in and watch any of these hearings, when it comes down to marking up these bills where these cuts are supposed to be, you know who won't even defend them? The Republicans," she said.
Democrats listened for hours to amendments as they proceeded through markups. Every time, said Crockett, they called out specific Republicans and said, "'Congressman such and such, what do you think?'"
"They literally were silent. It was almost like they were told, 'Don't say anything because we can't win. We just have to vote down these common-sense amendments and get through this, because this is what we've been told to do,'" she added.
A local high school baseball team in California's Bay Area is now in hot water after several of its players were heard yelling racist taunts at opposing players.
CBS affiliate WBTW reported Friday that parents want accountability from school officials after hearing "blatant racism" from players during an April 23 game between Albany and Pinole Valley High Schools. According to cellphone video, Pinole Valley players called Asian players "P.F. Chang" and "Baljeet," after the Chinese restaurant chain and the "Phineas & Ferb" character, respectively. Parents described the taunts as "blatant racism" and "discrimination."
"It’s not an acceptable behavior by any means, particularly in this community of ours, in the Bay Area," parent Mattison Ly told KRON. "I just don’t think that behavior, in this day, is tolerable."
"Understanding that their words and actions and intentions have serious real-world consequences, beyond which they can even understand,” parent Jason Turvow said of the chants. “It’s hit heavy on this side of the field.”
Eugene Lee, another parent who was present at the game, said that Pinole Valley's baseball season should end prematurely.
“It sends the right message,” Lee said. “It means that if you cross that line and you bring hate onto the field, you don’t get to take the field. Any action that happens after the season that doesn’t impact the current team in the current season ... is largely irrelevant.”
The Albany Unified School District's superintendent's office said that they had spoken with both the baseball coach and the school's athletic director regarding the incident, and sent out a district-wide email saying it had filed several complaints. However, Lee is calling for stiffer consequences for those responsible.
Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-MO) evolution on his views on Medicaid — a government health insurance program for low-income people eyed for big cuts this year by the GOP — caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board.
In a cheeky piece titled, "Josh Hawley’s Medicaid Switcheroo," the Journal recalled that when Hawley ran for office in 2018, he campaigned on getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, the massive health care law that expanded Medicaid to cover more people, including low-income adults who aren’t disabled.
Not so much, anymore.
"Now he declares the latter a red line he won’t cross," the Journal noted, calling it a "political evolution" that's "something to behold."
But this year, Hawley insists he won’t support any plan that cuts Medicaid, including that same part of ObamaCare he once rebuked. He threw his support behind a Democratic colleague's amendment to the Senate's budget resolution that sought to kill the House's plan to find about $880 billion in Medicaid savings over a decade. That effort failed, but Hawley doubled down, saying he won’t vote for any budget that cuts Medicaid benefits.
That includes adults covered under ObamaCare.
The flip-flop didn't go unnoticed.
"The irony here is that as state Attorney General in 2018 he joined a misconceived lawsuit by 20 states to overturn ObamaCare. He used the lawsuit to burnish his conservative credentials and win the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, whom he defeated that fall," the Journal wrote.
They concluded with a parting jab at the MAGA loyalist.
"While campaigning in 2018, Mr. Hawley vowed to do what Republicans for years had pledged by repealing and replacing ObamaCare with a better and less costly system. 'You deserve a Senator who’s driven to fix this mess,' Mr. Hawley told voters. Yes, they do," the Board concluded.
More than 20 percent of air traffic controllers assigned to the busy airport either walked off the job or went on medical leave, leading to a severe staffing shortage. The mass exit follows a pair of major system outages at the FAA's Philadelphia airspace operations center, which manages Newark's air traffic.
On Friday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that United Airlines is canceling 35 daily round-trip flights from the airport beginning as early as this weekend. That's about 10 percent of the airline's 328 daily round-trip flights on average at the airport, which was the 14th-busiest last year, according to the report.
“Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead,” Chief Executive Scott Kirby wrote in a message posted on the website.
Staffers tasked with overseeing Newark's airspace are now too few to handle the number of planes, he added.
The controllers expressed frustration and anger at having to work with archaic equipment and mounting operational stress. The FAA was forced to throttle flights, resulting in hundreds of delays and cancellations.
Several hundred FAA employees have been fired under President Donald Trump's administration, including those responsible for maintaining radar systems, landing gear, and navigational aids-critical support roles for air traffic controllers.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is facing tougher questions than ever about where he actually lives and whether he meets Alabama's residency requirements in his planned bid for governor, Kyle Whitmire wrote in an opinion analysis for AL.com published on Friday.
The far-right pro-Trump senator has faced accusations since at least 2023 that he has been secretly living in Florida rather than Alabama — and voting records only bolster these suspicions, Whitmire argued. The residency requirements to run for governor are stricter than for senator, requiring seven years in the state.
"If he truly was an Alabama resident, his income taxes should show it. It’s a chance to lay his cards face up on the table and take the whole pot," wrote Whitmire. "But so far he hasn’t. Instead, Tuberville has fallen back on a different argument — that his wife’s homestead exemption in Auburn is enough to prove his residency going back to 2018. A homestead exemption is a property tax break homeowners can take on their primary residence."
The trouble is, said Whitmire, there are records showing Tuberville voted in Florida during the time he claims he can establish residency in 2018.
"In 2018, Tuberville’s wife, Suzanne, and their son Tucker claimed a homestead exemption on a house in Auburn. (Tommy Tuberville was not on that deed but this is what says is proof of his residency.) However, later that same year, Tuberville and his wife continued to vote in Florida, according to election records," he wrote.
In May 2019, he noted, "Tuberville told talk radio host Dale Jackson that he moved back to Alabama in August of 2018 ... Jackson noted that Tuberville voted in Florida in November of that year, which Tuberville did not dispute. Jackson asked Tuberville whether he voted for Matt Gaetz, and Tuberville said he voted for the full Republican ticket."
He said he had moved to Florida because it had better airport access for his ESPN job at the time.
Moreover, in 2023, Senate records showed Tuberville "making frequent trips to the Florida panhandle."
"If he wants to show where he’s lived, he needs to show us his taxes. And while he’s at it, it wouldn’t hurt to show his utility bills, too. Where he flushes his toilet probably tells us more than his homestead exemption," concluded Whitmire. "He can do it now. Or he can wait for a political challenger to take him to court."
"I am a health care worker and I want to know what you're doing about the genocide in Gaza!" the woman shouted. The crowd tried to drown her out, chanting "Shame!" at the protester.
Ocasio-Cortez attempted to talk to the agitated protester, but she continued to shout until staffers finally approached her and pushed her into leaving the event. "Shame on you, I used to support you," she said as she left. "You're a war criminal! War criminal! War criminal!"
Once the protester exited, Ocasio-Cortez told the audience, "I more than welcome people who disagree, or are super p---ed off at me for any issue to come, but we have some ground rules here. Please wait for the Q&A, because we don't want to deprive all of our neighbors of the ability to have information and hearing them respond to it ... We need to be able to have this conversation."
Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out on the Gaza war, which has led to widespread civilian deaths as Israeli forces seek to neutralize the Hamas terrorist group following the Oct. 7 attacks.
She has also demanded answers as the Trump administration seized university students who organized protests against Israel for deportation.
Homan's repeatedly threatened Ocasio-Cortez in media appearances, and his comments were widely interpreted as attempts to intimidate or punish the congresswoman over her "Know Your Rights" seminars.
“Is that impeding our law enforcement efforts? If so, what are we gonna do about it? Is she crossing the line? So, I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out. Where is that line that they cross? So, maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now.”
At a Friday night town hall, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to challenge Homan to put up or shut up.
"When we first did one of these seminars, Tom Homan, then-acting director of ICE, said that he was going to threaten to refer me to the DOJ because I'm using my free speech rights in order to advise people of their constitutionally guaranteed protections. And he may want to do it again today. To that I say, come for me. You're going to have to come for me."
After attendees cheered and clapped, Ocasio-Cortez continued, "Do I look like I care?"
The congresswoman said she wants people to exercise their constitutional rights to beat back any erosion under Trump.
"Our rights are use it or lose it. So we need to use it. And we need to challenge them. So don't let them intimidate you into thinking you're doing something wrong by telling people what their actual, legal constitutional rights are. There's nothing wrong about it, and there's nothing illegal about it. And if they want to make it illegal, they can come take me. That's how I feel about it," she concluded, before walking off the stage.
AOC: Tom Homan said he was going to refer me to DOJ because I’m using my free speech rights in order to advise people of their constitutional protections… to that I say: Come for me… Do I look like I care?
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued a scathing opinion permanently blocking President Donald Trump's executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, which represented anti-Trump and anti-GOP clients in the past, declaring it in violation of the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments and ordering the firm's access to federal contracts, buildings, and security clearance restored. But more than that, she took a swipe at other law firms that capitulated to Trump rather than fight.
Trump has struck deals with a number of other firms with which he had similar gripes, like Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps, getting promises from them to commit tens of millions of dollars to pro bono legal work on behalf of the administration, among other things, like agreeing to change their hiring and representation practices.
Howell made clear in her opinion how cowardly she felt these deals were.
"In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase 'Let’s kill all the lawyers,' EO 14230 takes the approach of 'Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,' sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else," wrote Howell. "This message has been heard and heeded by some targeted law firms, as reflected in their choice, after reportedly direct dealings with the current White House, to agree to demand terms, perhaps viewing this choice as the best alternative for their clients and employees. Yet, some clients may harbor reservations about the implications of such deals for the vigorous and zealous representation to which they are entitled from ethically responsible counsel, since at least the publicized deal terms appear only to forestall, rather than eliminate, the threat of being targeted in an Executive Order."
"Only when lawyers make the choice to challenge rather than back down when confronted with government action raising non-trivial constitutional issues can a case be brought to court for judicial review of the legal merits, as was done in this case by plaintiff Perkins Coie LLP, plaintiff’s counsel Williams & Connolly, and the lawyers, firms, organizations, and individuals who submitted amicus briefs in this case," Howell wrote.
"Howell drips with disdain for the firms who capitulated to the White House and says of those who resisted 'will be the models lauded when this period of American history is written,'" wrote Politico legal analyst Kyle Cheney.
"An extraordinary opinion for an extraordinary moment in American history," wrote American Immigration Council attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
Rubio took to the X platform on Friday to opine that Germany "just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition."
"That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise," he wrote. "What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course."
Jewish organizations have called the party antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic.
"Founded in 2013 as an anti-European Union party, AfD has since radicalized and become an extremist, anti-immigrant party whose aim is 'to eliminate the free democratic basic order,' according to a 2023 report by the German Institute for Human Rights," noted the Anti-Defamation League.
The organization added that Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, has "twice been fined by a German court for using a banned Nazi slogan."
"The phrase, 'Everything for Germany' (“Alles für Deutschland”) was a slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers and engraved on their daggers," the ADL noted.
Critics unloaded on Rubio over the post — including Germany's Foreign Office, which sounded the alarm about "right-wing extremism."
"This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped," German officials replied.
Others joined in condemning Rubio.
"Nothing to see here—just the Secretary of State attacking one of our strongest allies, falsely accusing it of 'tyranny in disguise,' all in defense of a far-right, Holocaust-denying, pro-Putin party. This is INSANE," wrote the Republicans Against Trump account.
"You are in no position to lecture anyone, Marco. And the fact that you are now trying to prop up the AfD just shows how weak you really are," chided Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson.
"Nothing to see here: just the US Secretary of State advocating for an anti-Semitic, anti-Islamist right-wing German political party ... and then getting posterized by the German Foreign Office's social media manager," remarked Michael A. Cohen, columnist for MSNBC, on X.
"Rubio publicly criticizing an ally for cracking down on right-wing extremism. And Germany hitting back. We are in a new world," commented Noah Barkin, visiting senior fellow at the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund of the United States
That's according to a new exclusive interview with "Meet the Press," which was released Friday.
The president, whose estimated net worth is now over $5 billion, was twice asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he would accept a short term recession.
"People on Wall Street have expressed concerns about the possibility of a recession is increasing," she began. "And I want to know what you think about that. Are you comfortable with the country dipping into a recession for a period of time if you're able to achieve your long term goals?"
"Well, you know, you say, 'Some people on Wall Street say' — well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history. Why don’t you talk about them?" Trump said in the interview from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
"There are many people on Wall Street say this is going to be the greatest windfall ever happen," he continued.
A Sesame Street character with the most trash and a fragile ego was possibly one parody too far for President Donald Trump, according to the Daily Beast:
“The president signed an executive order to halt all federal funding to PBS, the free public broadcasting service. Almost immediately, people began to suspect that Trump’s vendetta against the network wasn’t because of its 'woke programming,'" wrote The Beast's Clare Donaldson. "Instead, it’s all to do with a certain puppet show that has been trolling the man since the ’80s.”
One of Trump’s longest-running haters isn’t one of his alleged scam victims, but “‘Sesame Street’—the educational children’s program that taught generations of kids to read and count.”
Cue the song lyric: “He’s got so much trash it spills out of his can!”
Ronald Grump first hit the scene in the late 1980s as a “famous Grouch builder” looking to replace Oscar’s trash can with a condominium of waste bins called “Grump Tower.” All Oscar had to do was surrender his can and relocate to a trashy condo in Grump’s new construction.
There were strings attached, of course, so Oscar ends up fighting his way back out of Grump’s twisty contract with the help of the Sesame Street community.
In a major blow to President Donald Trump, a federal judge has permanently blocked his executive order punishing a prominent law firm that represented anti-Trump clients.
The executive order in question targeted Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the group commissioning the "Steele Dossier" detailing alleged ties between Trump and Russia, as well as plaintiffs who overturned GOP-backed restrictions on voting rights. Trump ordered Perkins Coie barred from government contracts and federal buildings, and also ordered an investigation into the firm's hiring practices and a review of security clearances of its employees.
Several other law firms were targeted by similar orders, and some persuaded Trump to lift them by agreeing to deals to commit millions of dollars in free legal work for causes Trump supports. Perkins Coie, however, sued the administration, alleging the executive order violated their constitutional rights.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell agreed in a new order, finding that Trump's action "violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is therefore null and void."
She ordered all the restrictions on Perkins Coie to be immediately reversed, to halt all security clearance review of the firm, and ordered the administration "to notify all officers, staff, employees, and independent contractors subject to Executive Order 14230 that Executive Order 14230 is unlawful, null and void in its entirety and therefore should be disregarded, including all prior formal or informal advice, opinions, or direction previously received or communicated to effectuate, implement, or enforce Executive Order 14230."
