Trump would have difficulty convincing SCOTUS he should be able to commit a crime: experts

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Trump would have difficulty convincing SCOTUS he should be able to commit a crime: experts
Fulton County Court

Donald Trump has made it clear he intends to appeal decisions against him in all of his court cases all the way to the Supreme Court — but legal analysts are saying that it might not work out well for him.

Former prosecutors Mary McCord and Andrew Weissmann looked at the recent ruling from Judge Tanya Chutkan in the Washington, D.C. election interference trial — and explained her ruling is a textual one.

Speaking on MSNBC, Chutkan ruled Trump couldn't claim immunity through the office of the presidency.

"She first looks at the text of the Constitution and says there is no immunity explicit in the text of the Constitution for a president," McCord paraphrased.

"Contrast that, for example, to the speech or debate clause, which does provide immunity to members of Congress for legislative activity. So, nothing in the text. She looks at the structure of our constitutional system and says, it's far different from civil liability, where the pressure of potential vexatious litigation — once you're no longer president in a civil context — for money damages and things like that."

ALSO READ: Baboons, self-owns and smut: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Facebook page is a hot mess

But she said the same concern does not apply in criminal cases.

Ultimately, she said, there should never be a question about whether a president should or should not commit a crime.

"You just don't commit crimes," McCord said. "So, structurally, we don't need to provide this protection. And historically, it's always been assumed that presidents could face criminal responsibility."

Chutkan looked at Watergate and the pardon that Richard Nixon was given for any crimes he may have committed.

"So, her opinion is very well grounded in law and also is filled with quotable moments looking at our history and looking at the importance of the rule of law," McCord closed.

Weissmann agreed, saying that courts and judges are "really stepping up" on the cases involving Trump when it comes to drafting their decisions.

See the full discussion in the video below or at the link here.

Trump might have a hard time convincing SCOTUS he should be able to commit a crime: expert youtu.be

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Liberal candidates sweep school board elections as Moms for Liberty loses ground

By Carrie Sampson, Assistant Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, Arizona State University,

The Conversation, Michigan Advance

Election races for local school boards have become hotly contested in many states as they have become forums for debates over gender-identity discussions, immigrant students and even prayer at school events.

Liberal candidates largely swept school board elections on April 7, 2026, in politically contentious districts in Wisconsin, Missouri, Alaska and Oklahoma, where book bans, gender identity and prayer during school events were on the table.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Carrie Sampson, a scholar of educational leadership and policy with an emphasis on school boards, to understand what school board members do and why these local elections carry weight for many parents, teachers and students.

What are district school boards?

School boards are the governing organization for local school districts. There are typically anywhere from five to 21 members of a school board in a district. On average, there are seven to nine members on a school board.

Overall, there are approximately 13,000 school districts and about 90,000 local school board members in the United States.

School board members are typically elected, but sometimes they are appointed by mayors or other local or state officials. They are representatives of their local communities, as well as trustees who make governing decisions about school district budgets, hiring and other issues like a school district’s educational priorities.

School board elections typically have relatively low voter turnout. Research shows that nearly 40% of school board elections go uncontested.

The majority of school board members are unpaid, but some receive a small stipend for their work. A handful of school boards, like in Los Angeles, for example, receive a relatively large salary.

What does a school board member’s day-to-day work look like?

School boards typically meet twice a month, often to deliberate over issues such as budget or policy decisions.

One of a school board’s major jobs in most districts is hiring and firing a district superintendent, who effectively acts as the CEO of the district.

In terms of fiscal decisions, a school district administrator often presents what budget allocations should be for schools, and a school board votes to approve or disapprove that.

Most school boards create agendas and vote on a range of issues that are not particularly controversial, like whether the district will adopt an after-school program.

Why does a school board’s work matter?

School boards can make some critical decisions that impact the lives of students, parents and teachers. Many school districts are dealing with issues around school closures. Ultimately, school boards decide whether they are going to close a school in a district.

Many school districts are experiencing declining student enrollment, in part because of birth rate declines. People also have more and more school options to pick from, be it private schools, charter schools or homeschooling.

Within the past few years, school boards have also gained a lot of attention about whether they should ban particular books from districts, and whether they should ban or approve certain curriculum.

What other controversial issues have they taken on in the past few years?

Years before COVID-19, school boards in some conservative communities took on questions about which bathroom transgender students in public schools should use. Another big issue is whether schools should allow transgender students to participate on gendered sports teams.

During the pandemic, a rising number of communities began to see school boards as critical decision-makers. School boards were often making decisions about whether to close or reopen schools. They were also voting on requirements related to mask mandates or vaccines. Even people who didn’t live in certain school districts showed up at board meetings to advocate for certain COVID policies.

During the Black Lives Matter protest movement in 2020, some conservative communities started to speak out against critical race theory and their fear that it was being taught in K-12 schools. Most teachers don’t actually instruct on critical race theory.

Around this time, two major school advocacy organizations emerged nationwide: Moms for Liberty and Defending Education, formerly known as Parents Defending Education. These groups tried to elect conservative school board members to take on issues like book bans – and in some cases did so successfully.

My colleague Gabriela Lopez and I wrote a research paper in 2024 about people’s attempts to recall school board members. In 2021, we found, there was an all-time high of 545 school board members who faced recall, mostly because of mask mandates and other COVID-related issues.

Another trend was that police arrested or charged at least 59 people due to unrest at school board meetings from May 2021 through November 2022.

Are school boards taking on more controversial issues than they used to?

Every era has a point at which these controversial issues come to the school board level.

School boards made critical decisions around school desegregation in the 1950s through the 1970s. My research with colleagues on this topic shows that while many districts were legally mandated to desegregate schools, it was often school boards that voted on how these schools would be desegregated. Some school boards voted on policies that placed the burden on Black children and their families. One school board in Virginia even temporarily closed the schools completely to avoid desegregation.

Twenty to 30 years ago, many school boards faced tension over whether and how schools should teach sex ed.

Today, a lot of the political controversy about school boards is more widely known, for a few reasons. First, more communities have access to school board meetings, since many are video recorded. Second, social media has amplified what school boards do. There are also more outside organizations, such as local chapters of Moms for Liberty, that have been involved with school boards.

School boards taking on controversial issues are more likely to be in suburban and racially diverse school districts, compared to their rural or urban counterparts.

A report in 2024 found that the cost of conflict among school boards nationwide in 2023-24 was nearly $3.2 billion, when considering the amount of turnover or security needed for school board meetings.

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DHS staffers dish out gossip about Kristi Noem's tenure: 'Felt like a South Park moment'

Dozens and dozens of Department of Homeland Security insiders dished out damning details about Kristi Noem's chaotic tenure as the agency's top official.
The 54-year-old Noem was fired last month by President Donald Trump after she told lawmakers he had signed off on a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign and fumbled on questions about her alleged sexual relationship with DHS employee Corey Lewandowski, and agency insiders told the New York Times about similar examples of her self-aggrandizing leadership.
"At Secretary Noem’s first DHS town hall, she came out onstage to the theme song 'Hot Mama,' spoke for maybe a few minutes and took no questions and left," said Jason Marks, former supervisory refugee officer at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. "I wasn’t in the room, but it was something everyone was talking about in real time. It felt like a 'South Park' moment."
Noem had faced intense scrutiny since the administration surged Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers into the Minneapolis area, where agents shot and killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who she slurred as domestic terrorists.
"The Good shooting was cleared by Secretary Noem like within an hour," said one senior ICE agent. "There should be a real investigation. For lesser-trained officers, that made them think, okay, we can push the limits. You could really see that in the field in the lack of professionalism. ICE was giving us big cans of pepper spray we were never issued before. I know that if I spray someone, that’s a use-of-force incident that needs to be investigated. But all these new people were emptying out their canisters, driving by and spraying the crowd — no questions asked."
Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown, set a target at the start of his second term of 3,000 arrests a day at minimum and a million deportations in 2025, and DHS insiders described how Miller and Noem issued that directive to the officials expected to carry out those orders.
"Todd Lyons, the ICE director, introduced the secretary," said one former ICE senior executive. "She says to us, If I get fired in six months, I’m going to make sure you get fired in six months, and I’m like, Hold on a second. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and you just got six months under your belt. You should get fired because you don’t know how to run the mission."

"Then Stephen Miller goes up next, and he chastises our director," the former senior executive added. "He dresses him down in front of us. And I’m like, This is so unprofessional. A field office director says: We’re working through the list, but we’re having some challenges with the list. We’re going to get it done. We’re trying our hardest."

Miller then looked at Lyons and demanded to know how he was issuing the command.

"What are you telling your people?" Miller said, according to the former ICE executive. "I told you — there is no list. Everyone is fair game."

"Once that happened, I knew it was time for me to go," that former official said. "When he said, There is no list; you’ve just got to go and get them — well, define 'them.' How do I know who 'they' are? I’m brown, so what, you’re just going to approach every brown person and ask them what their citizenship is?"

Majority of tax dollars go to war under Trump as domestic programs face deepest cuts

Well it’s tax season again. Do you know where your tax dollars actually go?

As federal budgeting experts, we get asked about this a lot—often, it’s something people simply have no idea about.

But if you’ve watched the Trump administration launch one war after another, flood the streets of American cities with Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents, and call the very idea of an affordability crisis a “hoax” by their political opponents, you might be getting the general idea.

Around half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities. But last year, instead of investing in programs that help people make ends meet, the president and his friends in Congress passed a Big Ugly Bill that cut taxes for the wealthy, slashed health insurance and food assistance for millions of Americans, and added billions in new spending for war and mass deportations.

You spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine—and 23 days working to pay those Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs.

Some of those changes, such as the deepest cuts to health insurance, won’t take effect until 2026 or later. Others are taking effect now and are visible in the war on Iran and the deployment of mass deportation forces in our cities.

These enormous sums for the Pentagon and militarism more broadly—now well over $1 trillion—come with enormous costs to ordinary people. That’s true not just in terms of the opportunity cost for other programs, but also for the drain on our wallets.

In a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies, we broke down last year’s typical tax bill and what each household actually spent, on average, for different programs and priorities in 2025.

We learned, for example, that the average taxpayer paid $4,049 for weapons and war last year—a huge sum in a time of rising costs of living and stagnant wages. That’s far, far more than any other program funded by income tax dollars. Medicaid, the next highest item on our income tax receipt, ran a little under $2,500—and that funds healthcare for 1 in 5 Americans. School lunches and other nutrition programs, by comparison, ran just $124. The Postal Service? $19. (Big programs like Social Security and Medicare have their own dedicated funding streams, and aren’t as significant for your income taxes.)

More than half of the Pentagon’s sum went to private, for-profit military contractors—the top CEOs of which now make over $25 million a year on average. Put another way, you spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine—and 23 days working to pay those Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs.

The war in Iran hadn’t started yet when you were paying taxes last year. But if we use last year’s tax data and set the cost for the war at $35 billion—a line we’re likely on the verge of crossing—the average taxpayer will have paid $130 for the war on Iran. And that becomes a double whammy when you count the many hundreds more at the gas pump, grocery store, or on other expenses made worse because of the conflict.

Polls show that Americans don’t want this war that’s causing so many deaths in Iran and elsewhere at the same time people here in the US are left to struggle. Unfortunately, nobody in this administration asked us.

Meanwhile, programs that actually help people trying to make ends meet—a growing population of us, unfortunately—are getting cut. As more of those cuts take effect—especially to Medicaid—the gap between what we spend on the Pentagon and everything else will only keep growing.

Worse still, Trump and his allies are planning a repeat of last year’s Big Ugly Bill. The president has requested $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon next year—a huge increase from the $1 trillion budget this year. That would make the numbers all the more lopsided.

Nobody loves paying taxes, but we all agree we should get our money’s worth. And in a democracy, our hard-earned tax dollars should go toward programs that actually keep us safe and healthy.

Before plowing more money into the war machine, we need to take a long, hard look at how policymakers are using our money. Americans want a government that supports them when times are tough—not one that shakes us down for endless wars.

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