Bannon had appealed to the nation's highest court of nine justices, three Trump appointees, to intervene before he had to face four months in a federal low security prison in Danbury, Connecticut.
Liberal and Republican foes joined together to mock Bannon.
"Need some cheering up?" asked liberal commentator Jeff Tiedrich on X. "Steve Bannon went whining to the Supreme Court to please please pretty please keep him from having to go to prison and the Supreme Court just told Steve Bannon to f--- straight off."
A follower on X pointed out an NBC News report showing the 70-year-old Bannon had already been assigned his prison number.
"I know it was a rough night last night for Joe Biden, but he did a much better job today with a barnburner in North Carolina, and by the way the Supreme Court unanimously told Scabrous Phlemsack Steve Bannon not to make plans for July 4th," cracked The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson.
Meanwhile, the official Lincoln Project account remarked, "Steve Bannon is going to jail Monday, just in time for America's birthday."
Liberal activist JoJoFromJerz, similarly encouraged downtrodden Biden supporters to find joy in Bannon's misfortune.
"If you’re feeling down right now, you should know that the Supreme Court just denied sloppy Steve Bannon’s ridiculous Hail Mary to keep his cirrhotic, lice-infested, festering boil pus f---ing a-- out of the pokey," she wrote on X.
She later joked, "The question now isn’t whether or not Steve Bannon will go to prison, it’s whether or not he will finish molting while in there."
Former President Donald Trump shared with his social media followers Friday a message of empathy for President Joe Biden.
Well, kind of.
The message came in the form of an editorial from Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett on the national debate, which Trump shared Friday on Truth Social, that pitted the former president, a convicted felon, against the current one, an 81-year-old man.
"Why did it have to come to this humiliating moment before a national audience?" asks Jarrett.
The humiliating moment Jarrett decries is this: "Why did Democrats persist in protecting their candidate in the face of unmistakable evidence of impaired speech, memory loss, and disorientation?"
"I know what I do well," Biden said. "I know how to tell the truth."
In comparison, Trump's "torrent of lies" so outraged political analysts Thursday night that they felt obligated to publicly rebuke moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
"CNN inadvertently became one of the greatest disseminators of disinformation in American political history," responded Salon's Heather Digby Parton. "Millions of people heard Donald Trump's lies and since they were met with silence from the journalists on the stage upon whom people depend to tell them the facts."
Jarrett agreed that journalists were to blame — a novel never-before seen take that certainly isn't driving this one up the f$%^ing wall — but for a very different reason.
"Biden’s media handmaidens bear considerable blame," writes Jarrett. "They repeatedly assured the American people that their favored chief executive was sentient and sharp when they knew he was not."
Former President Donald Trump's legal team is reportedly planning to file legal motions to have federal obstruction charges against him dismissed based on a recent Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Justice Department overstepped by filing obstruction charges against more than 200 people involved in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The ruling cast doubt on dozens of the cases, which may be reopened.
In the ruling, the court ordered that prosecutors who charged rioters with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding must show that they tampered with physical evidence to meet the criteria met by the statute.
The vote was 6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissenting, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Fewer than 20 percent of the Jan. 6 attackers were charged with obstruction. Those that were generally face other charges as well. Most of the attackers were charged with trespassing on federal property and other crimes about attacking law enforcement.
A man convicted for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will face monitoring again following a decision from a federal judge concerned about his internet activity.
According to The Washington Post, web designer Daniel Goodwyn, a "self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys' right-wing extremist group," was sentenced to 60 days in prison and a year of supervised release after pleading guilty to riot-related changed in 2023.
The supervision was set to end in August.
But at a hearing on Thursday, federal Judge Reggie B. Walton said Goodwyn continues to traffic online “in the same type of rhetoric” that triggered the insurrection in the first place — and his probation officer was told to start monitoring his activity.
Walton had ordered monitoring of online activity when Goodwyn was sentenced but, in February, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. ruled that Walton had "'erred in imposing the computer-monitoring condition' because the judge had failed to consider whether it was 'reasonably' necessary," said the report.
After this happened, one prosecutor told the court that, “Throughout the pendency of Goodwyn’s case, he has made untruthful statements regarding his conduct and the events of the day, he has used websites and social media to place targets on police officers who defended the Capitol, and he has used these platforms to publish and view extremist media.”
Goodwyn's attorney slammed Walton's decision, noting that he is a self-employed “investigator and journalist” whose work will be more difficult with court-supervised monitoring.
More than 1,300 people have been charged in connection with January 6, with crimes ranging from misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct to more serious crimes like assaulting police and seditious conspiracy.
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that it was improper to charge January 6 defendants with obstruction of Congress, which could reopen hundreds of cases, although a majority are unlikely to be affected.
House Republicans infuriated former President Donald Trump's MAGA base Friday by urging President Joe Biden's Cabinet to declare him unfit to serve.
Rep. Chip Roy (TX) Friday afternoon submitted a resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment on the heels of a presidential election debate against Trump that political analysts describe as a failure for Biden.
"Biden has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated his inability to discharge the powers and duties of the Presidency, including, among others, the powers and duties of the Commander-in-Chief," wrote Roy in his resolution.
Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign adviser slated to head to jail next week on contempt of Congress charges, told viewers of his conservative podcast War Room that Biden's position in the White House imperiled the nation.
“This Biden radical regime that has put the nation in jeopardy," said Bannon. "We have a national security issue that’s going to lead to a constitutional crisis on the 25th Amendment.”
And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) threw tepid support behind Roy's resolution Friday in an interview with Politico.
"I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts.…And we hope that they will do their duty," Johnson told Politico. "If I were in the Cabinet…I would be having that discussion with my colleagues."
Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro claimed Friday it was Democrats' duty to urge the Cabinet to act.
"Every single Democrat who claims to care about the country -- and who is calling for Biden not to run for re-election -- should be urging his cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment," Shapiro said. "He's the president RIGHT NOW."
But Roy's announcement on social media and subsequent shows of support did not receive the unilateral praise the Texas Republican might have expected.
Indeed, he was soon bombarded with demands from far right that he withdraw the motion and keep Biden in place.
"This is a terrible decision," replied conservative Dominic Michael Tripi. "If Biden’s out, the chances that Trump loses go way up.
"Dude," replied X user John Ferguson. "He’s not running the country, leave him there and we win in Nov."
"NEVER interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake," replied X user @DubiousDoc.
"Way to play into the Democrats’ hands," added X user MistWorks. "Are you working with the Democrats?"
Shapiro was told in no uncertain terms to "hush" and vocal Trump fan Comrade Stump had this to say for all the conservatives pushing the invocation of the 25th Amendment
"Any conservative that wants Biden to 'step down' or invoke the 25th amendment is a r----d," he wrote. "Let Biden Cook for the next four months."
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal from far-right firebrand Steve Bannon to avoid prison after failing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Bannon was ordered by the Court to report to prison on July 1. He sought reprieve with the appeal, which the High Court shot down Friday.
CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane posted the news from the court showing that Chief Justice John Roberts denied the appeal officially.
Bannon ignored a subpoena to appear before the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. He and Donald Trump's adviser, Peter Navarro, repeatedly refused to comply with the subpoenas.
Both were convicted of contempt of Congress.
Bannon is expected to begin his sentence on Monday.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (SC) found herself in a tense exchange with CNN host Brianna Keilar on Friday during discussions over Joe Biden's cognitive ability, her support of former President Donald Trump, and "post-birth" abortions.
Mace hit out at a Biden, saying there's "no way" people in the center will support the current president in his bid for re-election. She also levied an accusation that Biden isn't actually running the country.
When Keilar asked Mace to explain her reasoning, Mace pointed to Biden's "cognitive decline."
"Last night," she said, referring to Biden's widely criticized debate performance, "For me, it was kind of heartbreaking — I had aging parents, I'm a mom, to see what they put him through, I thought was abusive. He should not have been on that stage. He should not have been in that debate. He is definitely not running the country."
Keilar acknowledged Biden should answer questions raised about his debate performance, but pushed back on Mace again, firing back: 'What evidence do you have?"
Mace pointed to the 90 minutes of Biden on stage.
"He needed an interpreter. You couldn't even understand what he was saying when he was answering the questions.," Mace said. "Something is not right. Something cognitively — he's clearly in a massive decline."
She blasted Democrats in the White House for "covering up" for Biden and slammed the media for "aiding" them. When Mace pointed to the debunked "cheap fake" video of Biden at the G7 Summit in Italy, Keilar pushed back yet again.
"He was greeting someone, just to be clear," she shot back, later acknowledging Mace was "raising some valid points."
"We all watched this debate last night, but I do just want to be specifically clear about all the videos that we've seen," she said.
Undeterred, Mace hit back.
"The mainstream media were calling these real videos, 'cheap fakes,' I mean we've all seen him dazed out, frozen, confused ...," said Mace.
But she was cut off by Keilar, who responded the media wasn't owning that statement.
"I think it was the White House press secretary who was calling it that," she said.
When the discussion pivoted to policy issues, Keilar played a clip of Trump's remarks that many abortions happen in the eighth, ninth or even "after birth." Keilar hit back at the former president's comments as "not even in the zip code of reality" and asked Mace her thoughts.
But Mace defended the former president's remarks, pointing to a case several years ago in which legislation filed in Virginia about "post-birth abortion."
Keilar again cut her own guest off.
"That's not accurately — you're not accurately representing that," she tried to interject.
"I am," said Mace, "adding emphatically: "And Roe v. Wade would allow by law abortion up to the ninth of a pregnancy. So those are just facts."
"Letting a baby die is a crime," Keilar retorted. "Just to be clear."
The pair then went toe-to-toe over what Mace called Democratic-led efforts to legalize post-birth abortion.
"You're not accurately ...," Keilar began, again cutting off Mace. "That's not what this is."
She later added: "When you talk about it like that, that is not an honest conversation. As you are aware, or I hope you are aware, abortions that occur later account for about 1 percent, right? We're talking after the 20-some-odd week mark. The sort of post-viability mark. The vast majority occur so much earlier."
She noted the ones that occur later have to deal with the health of the mother. When Mace tried to say she also cares about mothers who face life-threatening situations, Keilar steamrolled her.
"These tend to be — these tend to be wanted pregnancies, and these tend to be decisions that are done with so much emotion, questions of morality as well — they are not done lightly. The people who have actually been in that situation look at this characterization, and it's incredibly insensitive to them."
Mace accused Keilar of "mischaracterizing" what she said, and added she's always supported abortion when it involves the health of the mother. She's pushed back against far-right extreme positions on the issue coming out of states like Texas, she said, and has tried to find "middle ground."
When Mace tried to say she's seen enough of Biden after four years, Keilar interjected yet again.
"So you can overlook that? The fact that he will not commit to accepting the outcome of a free and fair election?"
Mace again said she's seen four years of Joe Biden, and again was cut off by the CNN host: "Why not answer the question?" And when Mace pointed to undocumented immigrants crossing the border, Keilar refused to let her dodge the question.
"Why not answer the question?"
Keilar tried to nail Mace down when the congresswoman said she felt Trump would win outright, noting it's key to her support.
"There is, of course, a possibility that he doesn't, and so the answer to that question is important," she said.
Alas, she didn't get Mace to answer.
"Unfortunately we're out of time," Keilar said, thanking her guest.
A tied primary election in Oregon was allowed to be decided by a coin toss.
The Oregon Capital Chronicle revealed that on Thursday, a heavily Democratic district in the northwest of the state in Eugene came down to a 50/50 chance. The Eighth House District didn't even have a Republican officially in the race, but there were about 103 Republican names listed as write-in candidates.
Technically speaking, the two highest vote-getters from Republican write-in votes were for Democrats Lisa Fragala and Doyle Canning, the former is her party's official nominee.
"Under state law, election officials needed to decide 'by lot,'" the report said. "Past ties have been settled by rolling dice, but in this case, election officials decided a coin toss was the fairest outcome."
So, the Eugene coin toss determined the Republican choice. The candidates weren't present, but the report described proxies and "government nerds" who were present to witness the state's deputy elections director pull a quarter out and flip it into the air.
The quarter landed tails up, which was a victory for Canning.
There's a problem with that, however. Canning lost the Democratic nomination in the election. The state has so-called "Sore loser" laws that block a candidate from accepting the nomination from any other party after losing.
The report said the next solution is for Republican precinct committee members to choose a nominee to appear on the ballot.
Canning burst into hysterics upon hearing the news.
“Even though we’re talking about seven votes, it’s great that we can all be so confident that the laws and procedures are so dutifully followed,” she said.
“The lesson here for any political party is to field a candidate,” Canning encouraged. “I’m sure, had the Republicans fielded a candidate, they would have gotten more than seven votes.”
In a scathing appraisal of how the two moderators of the first 2024 presidential debate let Donald Trump run wild with a firehose of lies, one critic stated the pair is responsible for letting the former president hoodwink viewers who aren't fully immersed in politics on a daily basis.
In her column for Salon, political observer Heather "Digby" Parton wrote that "State of the Union" anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash failed as journalists by letting Trump make a mockery of the debate by lying with impunity, and not calling him out on it before a huge television audience.
Candidly noting that Biden did poorly in the debate, Parton added, "As much as Biden blew the debate and missed his opportunity to dispel the concerns about his age, Donald Trump blew it too. He may have appeared more vigorous but he couldn't control himself and behaved once again like the undisciplined, lying, vulgarian who half the country already hates."
"He spewed a torrent of lies, was rude and insulting."
She then turned on the CNN moderators, singling out Tapper in particular, writing, "For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions.
"He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate, they would have been laughed out of the room."
Pointing out that after the debate a CNN exec texted, "We are very proud of Jake and Dana. Our job was to make sure candidates were heard so voters can make informed decisions and we are pleased we were able to do that," Parton wasn't having it.
"Actually, CNN inadvertently became one of the greatest disseminators of disinformation in American political history," she accused. "Millions of people heard Donald Trump's lies and since they were met with silence from the journalists on the stage upon whom people depend to tell them the facts, many of them probably came away believing he must have been telling the truth."
The conservative majority sided with an Oregon city that prohibited unhoused people from sleeping on public land, and Thomas said in his opinion in the case that he would like to "dispose" of a 1962 ruling that struck down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics, reported Newsweek.
"In an appropriate case, the Court should certainly correct this error," Thomas wrote.
The court relied on that decades-old ruling in Robinson v. California to decide that penalizing homeless people for sleeping on the streets when no other shelter was available did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
"Rather than criminalize mere status, Grants Pass forbids actions like 'occupy[ing] a campsite' on public property 'for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live,'" the ruling read.
Thomas argued that Robinson didn't need to be reconsidered to decide City of Grants Pass, Oregon, v. Gloria Johnson, but he signaled he would be wiling to take up a case that challenged that earlier ruling.
"Rather than let Robinson's erroneous holding linger in the background of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, we should dispose of it once and for all," Thomas wrote.
President Joe Biden acknowledged his poor debate performance on Friday following a night that sent many in the Democratic Party into full-blown panic and led many to call for him to drop out of the race.
Toward the end of a campaign rally speech to a packed audience of supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina Friday, Biden admitted: "I don't debate as well as I used to."
"I don't walk as easy as I used to," he said. "I don't speak as well as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do well: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong and I know how to do this job. And I know how to get things done."
Biden also said he's "not a young man, to state the obvious," leading to cheers of "Joe!"
And the president shared a familiar mantra: "When you get knocked down, you get back up."
Also during his rally, the president slammed former President Donald Trump's "record" number of lies during the debate.
Former President Donald Trump received a check on his quest to challenge his $464 million civil fraud ruling Friday by an exasperated lawyer who accused him going on a "fishing expedition."
Trump has sought to yank Justice Arthur Engoron from the New York City case — in which he was found liable of defrauding investors by falsely inflating Trump Organization assets — by arguing the judge had inappropriate conversations with lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey, court records show.
On Thursday, Bailey's own lawyer John Desiderio filed a motion to quash a subpoena demanding his client hand over a slew of documents to Trump.
"Defendants' admitted search for 'any pattern' of communication between Mr. Bailey and this Court confirms that Subpoena Demand No. 2 is the 'fishing expedition,'" writes Desiderio.
Trump's legal team then argued Bailey’s comments raised questions about improper influence on Engoron, an argument to which New York City Attorney General Letitia Jamesresponded in court filings, "None of this amounts to a hill of beans."
Professor Bruce Green, of Fordham Law School's Center for Law and Ethics, told WNBC there is no rule barring Engoron from discussing the law in the abstract so long as he doesn't get into the specific details.
"Judges don't have to live in a bubble,” Green told the outlet. "Whether a judge's hallway conversation with a lawyer is permissible or impermissible depends on the conversation."
Desiderio's motion was swiftly met with a counter from an attorney for Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organization CFO sentenced to five months in prison for perjury charges linked to New York Attorney General Letitia James' case.
"Mr. Weisselberg respectfully requests that the Court deny the Motion to Quash in its entirety and grant any such other and further relief as it may think proper," wrote attorney Armen Morian.
Democrats were jolted out of complacency about president Joe Biden's age with his alarming performance during his first debate against Donald Trump, and many party members are wondering what other options there might be.
The 81-year-old president and his supporters have brushed off concerns about his age by citing his accomplishments and pointing out that Trump is only three years younger, but the weaknesses cited by Biden's detractors were on clear display from the moment he first opened his mouth, reported Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake.
"The Democratic Party has spent much of the 2024 campaign burying its head in the sand over Americans’ concerns about President Biden’s age and mental sharpness," Blake wrote. "Rather than reckon with the problem, its most influential voices have cast it as an overblown media construct."
"But the party abruptly jerked its head out of that sand Thursday night, after a meandering, occasionally incoherent and almost universally panned first-debate performance from Biden," he added. "At its most pronounced, this has led to calls for Biden to step aside, including from those loyal to him."
Biden has insisted he's staying in the race, but many Democrats who had been eager supporters and apologists for the octogenarian chief executive until he took the debate stage are suddenly looking past him for a new standard bearer.
"That instantaneous reaction is hugely significant, in and of itself," Blake wrote. "It’s the kind of conversation you avoid — and the party has strained to avoid — until you view it as absolutely necessary. Going there and then having Biden stay would only damage him further, because a bunch of allies would have said either implicitly or explicitly that he is not up to the task."
Blake listed 10 potential options starting, of course, with vice president Kamala Harris, who's about as unpopular as the president, but then moving on to a crop of likely contenders for 2028 whose timelines may be bumped forward by an election cycle.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tops most lists as a female governor from a crucial state who already enjoys a national profile, while other governors like Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are all likely to run for president in four years – if not sooner.
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg nearly won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in 2020 as the mayor of a midsize Midwestern city and can skillfully debate Fox News hosts and Republican lawmakers, and senators Rafael Warnock of Georgia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota could make sense.
Michelle Obama "is the fantasy option for Democrats," Blake wrote, but she has expressed no interest in running for office at all.
"It’s truly a desperate plan and one that features many hurdles," Blake wrote. "It would almost surely require Biden’s assent to step aside — he holds almost all of the pledged delegates to August’s Democratic National Convention — and even then the process for replacing him is fraught. It’s not even clear that an alternative would render the party better off."
