Newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is being handed a massive headache in his new job due to President Donald Trump's latest pet project, according to a new analysis.
Blanche, who is expected to have his hands full defending the current administration's policies that are facing an avalanche of lawsuits, will also have to clean up the mess over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool prosecutions.
In her "Executive Dysfunction" newsletter, Ali argued that the president is "bizarrely fixated" on prosecuting 67-year-old former Olympian David Hearn for "vandalizing" the Reflecting Pool, despite U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro having already dropped the case.
White House officials have asked the DOJ to consider a new prosecution of Hearn, according to unnamed sources who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, which noted that such a move would be "highly unusual."
"It seems Trump has renewed faith in his new AG to get this job done, though, as unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal that White House officials have asked the DOJ to consider a new prosecution of Hearn, despite how unusual such a move would be," Ali wrote.
Ali noted Blanche will also have to contend with a "hearing to decide whether Hearn’s dismissed charges should be held with prejudice, so the DOJ can’t charge him again for the same alleged conduct."
"You dismiss with prejudice when there's a risk of repeated harassment and bad faith. Look at Trump's social media and tell me that risk isn't real," explained Norm Eisen, Hearn's lawyer.
Ali observed, "Based on this week’s reporting, that certainly still seems to be very much a risk."
Oprah Winfrey publicly distanced herself from two MAGA-world fixtures whom she played a major part in making famous.
The media mogul gave Dr. Phil McGraw a national platform back in 1988, long before he had his own show. Mehmet Oz followed in 2004. Both men rode Winfrey's audience to fame and fortune, launching their own spinoff programs — "Dr. Phil" in 2002 and "The Dr. Oz Show" in 2009 — that outlasted "The Oprah Winfrey Show" itself, which wrapped in 2011.
Now both men are deep in Trump's orbit and Oprah — a famed supporter of Kamala Harris as she took on Trump for the presidency — is scrambling to lose links to her protégés.
In an interview with Emmy Magazine, she said, “People criticize me for Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, because of their politics or their views,” Winfrey said.
“Everybody has their own path in life, and it has not one thing to do with me, and I don’t have one thing to do with them.
“At the time, the reason and intention behind me giving them their breaks was I thought they had valuable information to share that had been meaningful to me.”
McGraw tagged along with ICE agents during a Chicago raid last year and later landed a spot on Trump's Religious Liberty Commission — despite not being a licensed therapist. Oz, meanwhile, is running the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and has become a reliable sidekick to vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
She reserved her warmest words for McGraw, crediting him with being a steady presence when Texas cattle ranchers sued her in 1998 over comments about beef safety, and praised his grounded, relatable style as the reason she thought he'd resonate with viewers.
Her introduction to Oz, she said, came through best friend Gayle King — who, notably, was a guest at Jeff Bezos' wedding last year alongside a roster of Trump-adjacent power players — and Oprah herself.
Since going full MAGA, Oz has flip-flopped hard. He once said health insurance should be mandatory and government-subsidized for those who can't pay. Now, as a Trump official, he's helped gut a subsidy that kept Medicare drug premiums in check. He's also claimed Medicaid recipients are lounging around watching TV instead of working, and reversed his earlier support for transgender youth, now calling the movement rooted in "false science."
McGraw caught heat for downplaying COVID-era social distancing, comparing pandemic deaths to car crashes and pool drownings. His show's history includes multiple lawsuits — one from a woman who says she was sexually assaulted at a facility he recommended on air, another alleging she was held against her will during a taping. Former staffers have also described a toxic workplace that leaned on racist stereotypes for ratings.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) faced fury Thursday after he claimed he would have needed to be clairvoyant to predict Health department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would work to undermine vaccines.
The Louisiana Republican – a physician – told a CNBC host that he did not regret voting to confirm Kennedy to lead Health and Human Services despite his discomfort with the MAHA head's efforts to reduce the number of childhood vaccines.
"If you want to tell me that somebody didn't tell me the truth, and I should've seen in the future they were not going to tell the truth, you can say, 'Bill, you should've seen into the future,'" Cassidy said.
Kennedy's well-established vaccine skepticism was widely known — and cited at the time as a reason why Cassidy should not have confirm his nomination, critics were quick to point out Thursday.
"It was hard to anticipate that the guy who had spent the last several decades monomaniacally focused on promoting lies about vaccines would, given authority over them, try to curtail access and cut off research," said Media Matters' Matt Gertz. "Send a wallet inspector to the Senate Republican Caucus."
"'Oh so I was supposed to know that King Midas was going to turn things into gold???'" quipped journalist Philip Bump.
“'How was I supposed to know that was his thumb and he hadn’t actually gotten my nose? I’m not a doctor!'" cracked actor Mike Billips.
"You should have seen into the recent past when he not only frequently lied but most passionately said the opposite of what he told you, indicating he was either lying on the campaign trail to get votes or lying to you, both bad," posted influencer Chris Fredda.
"Somehow our system has elevated the weakest men possible into leadership roles in the Republican Party. It needs to be rebooted," sighed widely followed X user Bruce Crossing.
"EVERYONE knew that RFK Jr. would do this," thundered The Independent's Eric Michael Garcia. "Anyone who paid attention to what he said for the past two decades knew he would do this."
"As a US Senator you shouldn’t be so easily duped!" yelped popular X user The Red Menace. "After having been duped once, you allowed it again with Blanche Sit down and shut up - this is ALL your fault."
"BILL CASSIDY: If you want to tell me that somebody didn't tell me the truth, and I should've seen in the future they were not gonna tell the truth, you can say, 'Bill you should exercise reasonably good judgment and pay at least a little attention to the world around you,'" wrote novelist Scott Stein.
Attorney General Todd Blanche might be trying to appease Neo Nazis with a new attack on "bad break ups," a new legal analysis contends.
Empty Wheel journalist Marcy Wheeler on Thursday penned a scathing critique of the Justice Department's indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center as it accuses the DOJ of refusing to share information.
The indictment also arrived on the anniversary of Heather Heyer's death on Aug. 12, when Neo Nazis charged into Charlottesville and attacked an anti-racism protest.
"This is a clear signal from an administration riddled with Nazi sympathizers that it now views the infiltration of Unite the Right as a harm to society," wrote Wheeler, "and the claim that SPLC donors or its bank were duped is merely projection on behalf of the UTR extremists who were duped by SPLC’s informant."
The Justice Department's indictment accuses Heidi Beirich, a former top official at the Southern Poverty Law Center, of fraud.
The Washington Post described the charges as "an escalation of the Justice Department’s ongoing case against the storied civil rights organization."
Beirich, a political extremism expert, stands accused of overseeing payments to an undercover informant with whom she had a romantic relationship.
According to the indictment, Beirich, diverted at least $140,000 to a joint bank account they shared.
Beirich's attorney reportedly called the indictment an attempt by the Trump administration to “silence political opponents," according to the Post.
“Violent extremists have not stopped or intimidated Dr. Beirich from her vital work during her time at the SPLC or in the six and a half years after she left the SPLC,” defense lawyer Michael Proctor said in a statement.
Wheeler on Thursday said she agreed — arguing the charges are nothing new.
"There are no new alleged overt acts in the indictment (and as such this indictment suffers from the same structural problems that the initial and first superseding indictments did — which is that is accuses SPLC of attempting to fool two entities, its donors and a bank — that weren’t fooled at all)," Wheeler wrote.
"And, to a significant extent, the charges against Beirich may be nothing more than Todd Blanche’s effort to criminalize bad break-ups to help the Nazis."
Trading firms paying for early access to President Donald Trump's Truth Social posts could face criminal insider trading charges, a former Justice Department official warned Thursday.
Former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, during an appearance on CNBC, argued Truth Social users could be putting themselves in danger if they participated — and pointed to a federal lawsuit filed against the social media company to explain why.
"The rub here is that the president is the largest shareholder of Truth Social's parent company and that he is benefiting financially from the early access," Kanter told CNBC. "And so this is effectively — as the argument goes in the lawsuit — the president selling access to government information to traders before the public gets it more broadly."
The Truth Social API was launched on Aug. 1 by Trump Media & Technology Group, charging subscribers between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for millisecond-faster access to Trump's market-moving posts, according to NBC News.
Trump owns roughly 41% of Trump Media through a trust, according to regulatory filings.
The arrangement is now the subject of a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York by The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, according to court filings.
The plaintiffs argue Truth API violates the First and Fifth Amendments by giving paying customers preferential access to a sitting president's official announcements.
Kanter alerted potential traders to a niche form of insider trading that could be linked to the scheme.
"Insider trading liability doesn't just apply to the person who's giving the information," he said, "it can also apply to the person who's trading on the information — what we call tippee liability."
"[Y]ou could have a situation where four years from now they are investigated for insider trading — both as individuals and their companies as well," he added.
Because the statute of limitations extends beyond Trump's term in office, the former DOJ official pointed out that "folks who are using this API to trade need to be careful."
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) launched a formal congressional investigation into Truth API on July 31, demanding records from Trump Media, his office said.
"This White House-Wall Street-Trump-Business feedback loop represents the depraved essence of insider trading," Raskin wrote.
Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine rejected the criticism, telling NPR that Truth API "offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data."
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) introduced the Stop Corrupt Trading Act on Aug. 3, his office announced, and a House counterpart followed days later — together the bills would ban the practice and impose civil and criminal penalties for selling or buying early access to presidential statements.
President Donald Trump's "dream home" was subjected Thursday to a scathing critique from an infuriated MS NOW analyst who decried the big cash involved in fixing "absurdly niche" problems.
" Trump is well on his way to converting the people’s house into his own billion-dollar dream home," MS NOW's Hayes Brown wrote.
"It’s a mismanagement of funds at best, outright corruption at worst and ought to prompt legislators to place stricter limits on how and when public funds are rerouted."
The price tag for Trump's overhaul of the White House grounds has climbed past $900 million — a figure well beyond what the administration previously disclosed and far above what Congress typically budgets for upkeep of the Executive Mansion.
The Washington Post traced $875 million funneled into a normally modest "White House Repair and Restoration" account – $500 million transferred from the Secret Service and the White House Military Office, $305 million from private donors and $70 million from an unidentified source.
Brown warned that figure was likely to balloon, "Through shady donations from wealthy funders and corporations, questionable accounting practices and an entirely misplaced sense of focus."
Separately, a contractor's estimate for the ballroom alone reportedly reached $600 million, triple the administration's original $200 million figure and above the $400 million it has said donors covered.
The largest and most visible project is a new ballroom being built where the East Wing once stood, though a federal appeals court recently blocked further above-ground construction.
Other work underway includes a helipad on the South Lawn, renovated fountains at Lafayette Park, a new visitor screening center and an underground bunker — the last of which the administration has cited in court filings as a national-security rationale for the ballroom project.
"One could at least argue that the helipad solves a problem, albeit an absurdly niche one," wrote Brown. "The newest helicopters slated to serve as Marine One have exhaust vents that aim heat downward. The helipad would prevent those vents from scorching the grass below — and boy, does Trump care a lot about grass."
The projects are largely cosmetic compared with past White House overhauls, Brown wrote. The Truman-era renovation, prompted by fears the building could collapse, cost roughly $80 million in today's dollars, while the Obama administration spent about $375 million over four years on structural and electrical repairs.
"What we see, then, is a White House that feels comfortable pirating funds that Congress has otherwise appropriated to pay for unnecessary vanity projects, Brown wrote.
"Without further pushback from lawmakers and the courts, there’s little limit to how much more could be siphoned off to satisfy Trump’s obsession. These rushed and unauthorized works have already vastly outstripped their initial estimates, and given this administration’s love of no-bid contracts, they are being done without a modicum of care for anything but speed."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was raked over the coals on Thursday morning amid reports of horrific conditions that his US military forces face.
On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough reacted to reports that the USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed from San Diego for an extraordinary 200-plus days without a port call.
With Democrats calling for an investigation after family members of those deployed revealed things have become so bad that some sailors have had to be stopped from leaping off the ship, Scarborough launched into a withering tirade.
“This is the longest deployment on a ship like that ever,” co-host Willie Geist explained. "The Secretary of Defense seemed very interested and obsessed with their testosterone levels, but not whether or not they're getting real food aboard the ship as this war drags on.”
Scarborough erupted.
“This is insane by any measure at all,” Scarborough exclaimed. “And so think about it: we have this happening on the USS Lincoln. We have our sailors being treated like third-class citizens, treated like trash, actually.”
“So we're not taking care of job one, which is, again, military readiness,” he continued. “And secondly, we're not even able to keep count of the munitions that we have; Pete Hegseth, the DoD has run out of munitions to fight a hot war with Iran that Pete Hegseth told the president we should start.”
Scarborough continued to insult Hegseth's priorities, snapping, "He's sitting around talking about testosterone levels and doing all these stupid promo videos that are supposed to make him look tough."
Attorney General Todd Blanche deployed the Justice Department to rescue President Donald Trump's embattled IRS settlement the day after he was sworn in, court records show.
The settlement, reached in May, shielded Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits in exchange for dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the agency, court records show.
Late Wednesday night, Politico's Josh Gertstein flagged a new filing in the case.
"Trump Justice Department backs Trump's private lawyers in bid to have appeals court block and overturn judge's order imposing fraud-on-the-court sanctions for Trump-IRS settlement," he reported.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams threatened that deal in July, issuing a sanctions order against Trump's legal team and a gag order barring anyone from referring to the agreement in any official proceeding, according to the filing.
Democrats had predicted Blanche would move to help.
"He is about to become Trump's sword against his adversaries and shield against any scrutiny," Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) warned from the Senate floor during the confirmation fight.
"He will never do what's best for the American people. He will only do what's best for Donald Trump," Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said ahead of the committee vote advancing Blanche's nomination.
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had also raised alarms over the same settlement.
Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) refused to advance Blanche's nomination without written guarantees that the deal's tax audit immunity was limited only to the lawsuit's plaintiffs and that its proposed $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization fund" was dead, according to NPR.
Before being confirmed, Blanche gave the senators assurances in writing.
"We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund," Cornyn and Tillis announced jointly. Blanche also said that he would limit the scope of the IRS audit deal.
The Senate confirmed Blanche 50-49 on August 8. He was sworn in Monday at the White House, PBS News reported.
Blanche's Justice Department brought the fight to the Eleventh Circuit the next day, filing a brief in support of overturning Judge Williams's order, according to the court filing.
The court filing, signed by Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter, hit the docket the following day.
"Nobody can dispute that they indeed did suffer significant harm," McCotter wrote, defending the legitimacy of Trump's original lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns by a government contractor.
"The Complaint sought $10 billion, and the settlement provided them no money but rather an apology," McCotter wrote, arguing the deal was the product of a genuine legal dispute, not a political arrangement.
"It certainly would not have taken 109 days to reach a settlement," he added. "Collusive settlements hide exceedingly poorly in plain sight."
New reporting about a mystery plane fleet purchased by the Department of Homeland Security has pulled the agency's former head Kristi Noem back into the news cycle.
The ousted DHS secretary is distancing herself from a $464 million plane purchase that critics say has become a costly embarrassment for the department she once led — even though the deal was struck on her watch, reported the New York Times.
DHS paid Daedalus Aviation Corporation, a Virginia firm with political ties to Noem but no prior federal contracting history, to acquire 10 used aircraft last fall through a no-bid contract, invoking a rarely used exemption for cases of "unusual and compelling urgency" and saying the planes were needed immediately for deportation flights.
Months later, however, most of the fleet sits largely idle. Three of the planes are luxury business jets, and one of those has been leased to the FBI to support director Kash Patel's travel, and another was offered — unsuccessfully — to the Pentagon.
The remaining seven are Boeing 737s parked for extended stretches at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana, which an internal government document attributes to a lack of staff to fly them.
Now, as scrutiny mounts, DHS and Noem are pointing fingers at each other over who bears responsibility. In a written statement, the department said the Daedalus contract "was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Markwayne Mullin was sworn in" — an apparent effort to place the blame on Noem, who was fired by President Donald Trump in March.
A spokeswoman for Noem pushed back, telling reporters the purchase was actually "finalized" once Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator, took over as secretary.
Contracting records show the contract's value jumped by $303 million on the very day Mullin was sworn in.
Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), both on the Appropriations Committee, sent DHS a letter this week demanding "a full accounting," noting that department staff had already conceded most of the planes would not be used for deportations after all.
Daedalus's chairman, William Walters, had previously donated to a political committee connected to Noem when she was South Dakota's governor — a detail fueling questions about how the company landed the contract. A company spokesman said Walters was unaware of the committee's ties to Noem.
The plane purchase echoes an earlier reversal under Noem's tenure, when DHS spent more than $700 million acquiring detention warehouses, only for the agency to begin giving or selling them off months later under Mullin.
For now, DHS says it needs a new contractor just to keep the planes flying — with that arrangement not expected to begin until next summer.
This story has been updated with comment from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A White House official called $4 billion in taxpayer funds being spent to address homelessness “God’s money — a move experts call an escalation of evangelical religious rhetoric coming from the Trump administration.
Dave Donaldson, special assistant to President Donald Trump in the White House Faith Office, spoke at a webinar inviting faith communities to apply for funds through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program, the largest federal assistance initiative to combat homelessness that provides funding to states, American Indian tribes, nonprofits, and housing entities.
Organizations can apply through the end of August for a share of more than the $4 billion, with more than a quarter — a “historic” amount — available to new organizations, according to the webinar.
“I heard the other day, a faith leader said to me, ‘We shouldn't touch that government money,’ but how many know ultimately it's not the government's money? It's God's money, and it's your tax dollars,” Donaldson said.
“If we do not compete with this HUD Continuum of Care, these funds by default are going to go to perhaps organizations that have values that you do not share, and so I cannot urge you enough to do whatever it takes to compete.”
A HUD spokesperson replied to Raw Story's questions via an emailed statement.
"HUD is welcoming faith-based organizations back to the table on a level playing field after the Biden administration spent years funding the same set of organizations and mandating exclusive adherence to Housing First and other harmful ideologies. Faith-based organizations will be evaluated on the same competitive basis as all other applicants," the spokesperson said.
Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies the impact of religion on American life and politics and hosts a popular Substack, “Graphs about Religion,” called the “God’s money” comment "very odd.”
The second Trump administration has embraced evangelical language, evoking religion more so than previous presidential administrations who tended to reference religion more “generically,” Burge said.
“Trump 2.0 is a decidedly more evangelical administration than even Trump 1.0. Guys like Pete Hegseth are a great example of that, of being very evangelical in their approach,” Burge said.
“It's like ‘God owns everything. God's providence is over all of us’. That kind of language is very evangelical."
'Combativeness is so much more evident'
Donaldson isn’t the only Trump administration leader who has recently pushed evangelical language.
Paula White-Cain, a White House faith adviser, in a recent webinar for the National Faith Advisory Board, called on evangelical Christians as “the body of Christ, just the church” to register to vote to ensure “we would never have an election problem again.”
That type of language is “very old evangelical rhetoric,” Burge said.
“This is a constant in the Trump administration. They're always fighting against the Deep State. ‘If we don't take this money, then they're going to take it and use it for priorities that we don't like,’” Burge said.
“That combativeness is so much more evident in this administration than prior ones.”
In the webinar, White-Cain called the election of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and Muslim, as a mayor of New York City “a very scary time.”
The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore) The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore)
“You’re not just talking Socialism … you are talking straight up Marxism, and if you don’t think that has consequences, most of your churches got shut down during COVID,” White-Cain said.
Burge called that language “couched anti-Muslim rhetoric,” promoting the idea that “Muslims are taking over America, and they're the real threat facing the country.”
“It's sort of an anti-Muslim in a way that I think is very unique today, that wasn't true even three or five years ago, and it seems like almost like a return to the post-9/11 Islamophobia stuff is coming back,” Burge said.
The Religious Landscape Study from the Pew Research Center shows that 62 percent of Americans identify as Christian, 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated and 7 percent identify with other religions. Muslims make up 1 percent of Americans, according to the study.
While nearly 80 percent of Americans do not want churches involved in politics, Americans are more open to politicians using religious language, particularly related to Christianity, according to Pew reports.
Pew’s research shows that since Trump has taken office again, Americans perceive that religion is having a greater influence on society, and 55 percent of those surveyed view religion’s role in American life positively.
The number of Americans who think Christianity should be the U.S.’s official religion grew slightly to 17% in 2026, up from 13% in 2024.
“Even though people don't really want to see partisan politics happening at the church level, there's definitely a clear sense that religion, and particularly Christianity, is part of the fabric of American culture,” said Chip Rotolo, senior researcher at Pew.
“People would like to see Christian moral values promoted, and even if they don't support things like Christian nationalism on the whole or the ending of church-state separation, something like the general presence of Christian values in society is pretty well supported.”
Evangelical Protestants are the largest group of Christians in the U.S., making up 23 percent, and are the group most likely to approve of Trump, according to Pew.
“We've seen support for Trump generally go down among all religious and non-religious groups, but it's still worth noting that some of the more devout religious groups, groups like white evangelical Protestants, support for Trump overall is very high, and Trump acknowledges that sometimes," Rotolo said.
"Sometimes you see this reciprocal thing when politicians use certain religious language these religious communities value that.”
The White House and National Faith Advisory Board did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
President Donald Trump's slapdash management of the White House has cost him a key contact with his MAGA base, a new political analysis contends.
The president's unfocused messaging to his MAGA base was often cleaned up by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and her departure will create a major void at the White House with no immediate relief in sight, CNN reported Thursday.
Filling her shoes may be "impossible" for the embattled president, according to the report.
"Leavitt understands the Trump id,” the report stated. “She’s been a leader in his second-term assault on Washington institutions of accountability — in this case, the Beltway press. Just like the boss, she broke the mold of her position."
Trump will struggle to replace Leavitt's combination of skill because, according to the report, she "speaks to his MAGA base more fluently" on camera than anyone but the president himself, turning her briefings into demonstrations of "Trumpian defiance."
And, according to CNN, he only has himself to blame.
“Most White Houses groom one or more deputy press secretaries for the top job, which typically grinds down incumbents within a few years,” the report noted. “The lack of a visible succession plan for Leavitt will fuel speculation that Trump may just take on the entire task himself.”
President Donald Trump was fixated on an oddly specific, off-topic subject during an interview just days after he launched a war against Iran, according to a reporter who spoke to him.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman met with the then-79-year-old president in March at the Oval Office, where he fondled photos of the types of greenery he wanted to choose for a White House renovation, she told Axios in a new interview.
"You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows," Haberman said. "He picks up these pictures, and [they're] of maple trees, and he says, 'I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.' I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said."
Haberman is co-author, with her colleague Jonathan Swan, of "Regime Change," which has sold roughly 600,000 copies and recently logged seven straight weeks atop the Times bestseller list. Her read on Trump's priorities offers a window into what genuinely animates him.
"What interests him are things that you can see and touch," she said.
Roughly 70 percent of the president's attention — "maybe plus or minus 5 percent," she said — goes toward gilding, construction, renovation, renaming and tribute projects.
"He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self," Haberman told Axios co-founder Mike Allen. "There is no precedent in U.S. history of a sitting president devising such endeavors in their own name."
Haberman first floated the percentage estimate in an interview with Times colleague Ezra Klein, describing it as "a legacy thing," and she said the war seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind.
"He didn't really want to talk about that," she said. "He didn't really want to talk about policy specifics. He wanted to describe himself as winning, and he wanted to show us how he had remade Washington."
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, built to fight Jim Crow, has been quietly restocked with an almost all-white army of attorneys — and a new report has named them.
For nearly 70 years, the division enforced voting rights, fair housing, and police accountability. Trump forced out roughly 75 percent of its lawyers, according to Public Citizen.
Their replacements are almost all white.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon swore in more than 100 of them last month and named none of them publicly, according to Public Citizen. In all, 368 employees left the Civil Rights Division after Trump took office, according to a Senate memo citing a Justice Department disclosure.
On the division's 68th anniversary last December, more than 200 former employees signed an open letter criticizing the Trump Justice department for gutting the division.
"But after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave — along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of attorneys. Now, we must sound the alarm about the near destruction of DOJ's once-revered crown jewel," the letter read, per Al Jazeera.
Dhillon swore in the new group on July 8, posting group photos on X alongside two portraits of herself presiding over the ceremony, according to Public Citizen.
"[T]hese civil rights warriors will enforce our nation's laws to benefit ALL Americans, not just a select few," Dhillon wrote on X.
Before joining the Justice Department, Dhillon's law firm represented President Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and a Google engineer fired for writing a memo against diversity programs, according to the report.
Weeks after her confirmation, the division tore up consent decrees reached after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and closed investigations into six more police departments, the report said.
Her top deputy, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jesus Osete, marked the swearing-in by posting a parable on X, according to Public Citizen.
"I am building a Cathedral,'" Osete wrote, quoting a story about stonemasons.
Osete also attended meetings, beginning in fall 2025, of lawyers Trump tasked with reinvestigating his 2020 election loss — meetings that preceded the FBI's seizure of roughly 700 boxes of election records from Fulton County, Georgia in January 2026, according to Public Citizen.
At least five of the 11 attorneys Public Citizen identified arrived with documented records of misconduct, controversy, or irregular hiring, the report found.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Morrison, a career Justice Department attorney, tried to block his own colleagues from forming a union after Trump's 2024 election, then was rapidly promoted, the report said.
Acting voting section chief Eric Neff came from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, where he charged an election-software CEO based on a tip from an election-conspiracy group, according to Public Citizen.
The charges were dropped within weeks, citing potential bias. Los Angeles County paid $5 million to settle the resulting civil-rights lawsuit and publicly declared the CEO innocent, the report said.
Acting Second Amendment Section chief Barry Arrington represented Sidney Powell in a defamation suit over 2020 election conspiracy theories and helped a Colorado charter school block its valedictorian from coming out as gay at graduation, the report said.
Senior counsel Daniel Flickinger was forced to resign from a Birmingham, Alabama law firm in 2020 after a Facebook post about George Floyd's death, according to the report.
"Things I think about: If I were a seven-time felon, with my most recent prison stint stemming from robbing and holding a pregnant woman at gunpoint in her home, would I choose to die in a fentanyl and methamphetamine numbed strangulation if it meant being worshipped in a nationwide funeral and my family receiving millions of dollars? Purely hypothetical," the post read, per an Alabama Supreme Court opinion.
Flickinger now helps run the federal office that polices civil-rights compliance on college campuses, the report said.
Attorney Greta Gieseke was hired with just 11 months of non-clerkship legal experience and immediately detailed to Dhillon's office — bypassing an internal policy requiring three years of service before such a transfer — according to Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT).
Human Rights Watch released its own report on the division Wednesday, separately documenting the changes.
Journalists and civil rights lawyers began describing what was happening as the most severe rollback of federal civil rights enforcement since Reconstruction, Human Rights Watch found.
"The Trump administration is targeting efforts to address discrimination without offering any alternatives," said Trey Walk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore) The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore)