Matthew Chapman

Trump administration prosecutors in Miami are hunting for a pretext to charge government officials in Cuba with U.S. crimes, reported MS NOW's Carol Leonnig and Jake Traylor — a development that comes shortly after Trump suggested that there could soon be leadership changes in the Communist nation.

This working group has sparked fear among experts, as such an operation would be a "dramatic" breach of federal prosecution standards.

"A Justice Department-led effort to seek to prosecute leaders of the communist nation on the nation’s southern flank has been ongoing since mid-February, which could help propel a change in Cuba’s leadership, the people told MS NOW," said the report. "The U.S. attorney in Miami, Jason Reding Quinones, created the multi-agency working group, emphasizing internally that it had an urgent goal: find and pursue leaders of the Cuban government or Communist Party for prosecutable violations of federal law."

The Trump administration has grown more bold in recent months about such operations; its raid into Venezuela captured longtime authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, and Trump is now launching joint strikes with Israel against Iran, which killed that country's Supreme Leader.

But there's a big difference with what is reportedly going on in Cuba.

"Law enforcement sources said they fear this approach marks a dramatic break from the Justice Department’s standards for prosecuting crimes, which have long required that federal investigators have some evidence or intelligence to suspect a specific crime has occurred before opening an investigation," said the report. "In the past, federal prosecutors or FBI agents have launched similar multi-agency working groups when they have information suggesting a pattern of criminal activity, and want to broaden their effort to determine the specific people responsible, former prosecutors told MS NOW."

Former federal financial fraud prosecutor Chris Mattei said the timing is suspect: “We don’t know whether there is information within the U.S. Attorney’s office to show there is urgency — and whether there is a legitimate law enforcement reason or some other unusual objective of the administration, like regime change. A working group might be speedily set up to address an urgent threat — but that’s not typical.”

Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the "sloppy and dishonest" Justice Department has proposed a new rule that would effectively block state bars from investigating federal prosecutors they license to practice in their state — but there's already a massive flaw in the plan that will make it nearly impossible to enforce, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate on Friday.

"Under this rule ... Bondi could freeze state bars’ probes until the department has undertaken its own independent review of any allegations — a black-box process that could stretch on extensively," said the report. "Wielding this new power, Bondi could essentially quash any state investigations into ethics violations by DOJ lawyers, including accusations that these front-line attorneys lied in court, by allowing 'reviews' that might last indefinitely."

Where this runs into problems, Stern said on a podcast with fellow legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick, is they won't be able to get courts to actually pause state bar investigations in accordance with this rule.

"The proposal itself is extremely ambiguous as to how, exactly, the DOJ would actually suspend state bar investigations," said Stern. "It just says that the department shall 'take appropriate action to prevent the bar disciplinary authorities from interfering with the Attorney General’s review of the allegations.' That almost certainly means going to federal court to get an injunction against the state bar’s investigation."

But the Supreme Court has already prohibited lower courts from doing this, he continued: "In a case called Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Association, the court unanimously ruled that federal courts must avoid interfering with legitimate and ongoing state bar disciplinary proceedings, because states have 'an extremely important interest in maintaining and assuring the professional conduct of the attorneys it licenses.'"

This comes as a huge litany of federal prosecutors working for the DOJ have been accused of serious professional misconduct, and as federal judges have accused them of outright lying to them in court.

It also comes as Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor who unsuccessfully tried to indict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James before being disqualified from office, was reportedly the subject of a complaint to the Florida State Bar, although they have since clarified previous reports they opened an investigation into Halligan were incorrect.

Far-right actor James Woods announced on X Friday that he is leaving the Republican Party — because Republicans in Congress aren't willing to be aggressive enough in support of President Donald Trump and his conspiracy theories.

The catalyst for Woods' anger appears to be a far-right account that posted a video from Lindell TV of Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) complaining that the House GOP refused to sign on to her subpoena to pursue racist conspiracy theories against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

“I tried to subpoena her immigration records, her brother husband's immigration records, and IT WAS REPUBLICANS that killed my motion,” she said in the clip.

Republicans, going all the way up to Trump, have long latched onto an unsubstantiated rumor, first posted to a Somali-American diaspora internet forum years ago, that Omar's ex-husband was actually her brother, and their marriage was a fraudulent scheme to grant him citizenship.

The GOP's lack of interest in pursuing Mace's subpoena, combined with Trump's flagship voter suppression bill being stalled in the Senate, appears to have been the final straw for Woods.

"I am done with the Republican Party," wrote Woods. "Between this and Thune’s refusal to pass the SAVE Act, I’m done with these uniparty traitors. I’m changing my party affiliation to Independent. No wonder President Trump is fighting an uphill battle every day."

Woods, who featured in "Salvador" and "Casino" and was the voice of Hades in Disney's "Hercules," has long said his outspoken support of Trump has ended his career in Hollywood, with his talent agent dropping him over political disagreements in 2018.

In yet another shakeup of a closely-watched legislative race in North Carolina, a local elections chief in Rockingham County alleged a progressive activist illegally tried to interfere with voters going to get provisional ballots cured.

The election concerns the primary nomination for state Sen. Phil Berger, President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate, and one of the most powerful Republicans in the state. As of now, he trails his primary challenger, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, by just two votes, with a recount, ballot curing, and legal challenges likely to decide the outcome.

According to WRAL, however, Rockingham County election board chair Don Powell alleges that there are already shenanigans in the ballot-curing process.

Per the report, Powell said a "woman was approaching voters Thursday as they entered and exited the board’s office in Reidsville, asking voters who they voted for while recording videos of the interactions. Powell says he told the woman that she wasn’t allowed to approach voters or record them at the office. He said she returned again to the office on Friday."

"Powell, who reported the incident to state elections officials, said such interactions could deter voters from meeting with elections officials. 'That prevents people from coming in, having open conversations with our people without us having to take them to a private room to ask questions and feel comfortable with the answers — because she was sitting right there,' Powell said," the report continued.

The woman, who called herself "Chris," reportedly "handed [Powell] a pamphlet from Blueprint NC Faith Table," which claimed the group is “building a nimble, responsive, adaptive and scalable network ready to counter the impact of MAGA and white Christian nationalism.”

Berger had extensive financial backing, and an endorsement for President Donald Trump. Despite this, Page, who had just $45,000 in fundraising to the millions deployed on Berger's behalf, ran an outsider campaign attacking him as an entrenched politician.

President Donald Trump's administration got bad news on Friday, with the release of a worse-than-expected jobs report showing 92,000 jobs lost and unemployment ticking up to 4.4 percent. But his top officials are scrambling to spin it away, reported The New Republic — blaming anything but Trump's policies and emphasizing, often with fuzzy math, that Trump is still in the black on jobs.

Kevin Hassett, Trump's director for the National Economic Council, led the tone of the rhetoric in an interview on CNBC.

"Hassett blamed a spate of severe winter weather, a massive strike at a major health care provider in California and Hawaii, and a recent update to the BLS’s birth-death model that tracks the opening and closing of businesses," reported Edith Olmsted. He also argued that the numbers should be averaged with previous months, saying, “If you take the average over a few months we had a surprisingly positive one last month, and a surprisingly negative one this one, but on average it’s about what we expect to be seeing because immigration has gone down so much the break-even employment is probably in the 30 or 40,000 jobs a month range.”

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has lately been embroiled in scandals over inappropriate behavior with subordinates and misuse of public resources, made similar claims, the report noted.

Speaking to Fox Business, Chavez-DeRemer "also tried to blame the 'bad report' on weather and the strike, before just blatantly lying about the publicly available numbers. 'That has been resolved, so we’re hoping to see those numbers tick back up next month,' Chavez-DeRemer said ... 'But overall, we’ve gained 60,000 new jobs over the last two months,'" wrote Olmsted, who noted, "In reality, the latest report saw 126,000 jobs added in January, and 92,000 taken away in February. That’s just 31,000 new jobs. Either Chavez-DeRemer is too stupid to do the math, or she thinks you are."

Trump's tariffs are broadly agreed by economists to have been a drag on the economy for a year, and his new invasion of Iran risks another surge of inflation as oil markets spiral into chaos.

Yet another company is suing President Donald Trump over his illegal tariff scheme — this time, video gaming giant Nintendo.

According to Kotaku, "In the lawsuit that was filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade on Friday, Nintendo lawyers argue that since February 1, 2025, President Trump has collected money from companies shipping products into the United States via 'unlawful' executive orders 'imposing tariffs on imports from a long list of countries around the world.'"

In the complaint, first obtained by Aftermath, Nintendo seeks a full refund of all the money collected from the tariff scheme — including interest.

Last month, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision that Trump's entire basis for imposing the tariffs without an act of Congress — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — did not grant him taxing powers, and the tariffs were therefore null and void. The Trump administration has vowed to rework the tariffs using other statutes to continue imposing them.

Even before the justices handed down that decision, other companies have filed similar complaints to Nintendo, one of the most notable being bulk goods club retailer Costco in December.

Nintendo owns some of the most valuable and well-known video game franchises in the world, including Mario, the Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon, as well as a long line of gaming hardware including the Switch and Switch 2. The company is headquartered in Japan, although the lawsuit was brought by its U.S. subsidiary, Nintendo of America.

Trump has been dismissive of the idea that his tariffs are costing businesses money, famously saying last year that toy companies should just set up doll factories in the United States if it's such a threat to their business model.

With President Donald Trump firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, his new replacement, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), will be in the spotlight.

MS NOW's Jen Psaki explored some of the things Mullin has said and done in the Trump era — and why it is a sign not much may change.

"Now, Trump's new nominee to run DHS ... did not kill his own puppy," mocked Psaki, referencing the infamous boast Noem made in her biography. "He does have some choice biographical details himself. I mean, you might remember a few years ago when Senator Mullin challenged a witness in a Senate hearing to a physical fight on the Senate floor. Mullin — I would note, a former MMA fighter — then defended that conduct by saying this."

"It's silly, it's stupid. But every now and then you get punched in the face," said Mullin in the clip.

"Do you know I don't? He's a senator," said Psaki. "I mean, anyway, after that, Mullin explained that he actually looked into the rules on whether or not he would be allowed to physically fight someone on the Senate floor. He pointed to the precedent that you used to be allowed to cane people, which, for the record, is not true. The story really is that the pro-slavery congressman who beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in 1856 was, in fact, arrested for that crime. But that is the kind of behavior Mullin seems to want to replicate anyway. And now he's in charge of DHS, and in all the important ways, we have no reason to think he will be any better than Kristi Noem."

For example, Psaki said, "After ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis this year, after the Justice Department initially announced that they would not be investigating the officers involved in that shooting, here's how Mullin responded when asked whether those officers deserved investigating."

"If they're investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protesters and who's paying them to obstruct federal officers from doing their job," Mullin said in the clip.

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President Donald Trump's escalating attacks on Iran are going to undermine much of the rest of his agenda, a Republican strategist told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“The longer this goes on, the worse it is politically, full stop,” Matthew Bartlett, who previously served in the Trump administration's first-term State Department, told the Journal — because the more he focuses on international adventures, the more he will neglect domestic economic policy. “‘America first’ has now turned into America strikes first,” he added.

This comes as experts broadly expect gas prices to surge as an Iran conflict undermines the global oil trade, much of which travels through the Persian Gulf right near any potential conflict zones.

Indeed, the Journal said, some people are already noticing the wartime fuel inflation.

"Aung Min Tun drives a delivery van up to 500 miles a day, so he was thrilled when gasoline prices started to drop after President Trump took office last year. Overnight this week, he watched them rise to $3.39 a gallon from about $3.00 at gas stations he visited in Illinois," said the report. "'This 30 cents within the night, I’m just a little concerned,' Tun said while taking a break at a rest stop. His one-man business should be fine if prices stay below $3.50 a gallon. Any higher and it will hurt, Tun said. Above $4.50, 'I could not run the business,' he added."

Tun, who immigrated from Myanmar, voted for Trump in 2024.

Low gas prices, the report noted, are one of the only things working to cool off inflation, as Trump's tariff policies for the last year have caused chaos in supply chains. "A sustained war throughout the Middle East could deepen the impact, potentially causing inflation to head back up — or stoking anxieties that could damp consumer spending and slow economic growth."

A superior court judge in Indiana has blocked the state's near-total abortion ban from being enforced — because it isn't an absolute ban.

The case, resting on a novel legal theory, was brought in Marion Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union, seeking a religious exception from the abortion ban under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would effectively allow those who disagree with the law to not follow it.

As evidence that the law applies, the ACLU pointed to the ban's exception for rape survivors — a common provision many Republican lawmakers slip into abortion bans in an attempt to make them more palatable to the general public.

But allowing abortion in cases of rape doesn't do anything to advance the state's given reason for the legislation, argued the ACLU — namely, to protect the unborn as human life. Therefore, the law doesn't have a compelling interest for existing outside of the religious beliefs of the lawmakers who made it, and it follows therefore that, just as it doesn't bind survivors of rape, it shouldn't bind people whose sincerely held religious beliefs actually endorse or require abortion in certain circumstances.

Judge Christina Klineman ruled in favor of this argument.

"The State has not met its burden to establish that this purported interest is compelling from the moment of fertilization or conception and under all circumstances," she wrote. "The Abortion Law would allow a plaintiff to seek an abortion if her pregnancy were the result of rape, but not if it were mandated by her religious beliefs. The State has not justified this differential treatment by establishing that its interest in the same prenatal life changes based upon the reason for terminating a pregnancy. The fact that the Abortion Law expressly allows for abortion in other circumstances, in at least one circumstance at any gestational age, demonstrates the lack of a compelling interest in 'protecting life' under all circumstances and from fertilization."

Klineman also poked other holes in the law, including that it explicitly protects the right to in vitro fertilization, even though this requires fertilized human embryos to be discarded as medical waste.

"The State has not satisfied its burden under RFRA to demonstrate a compelling governmental interest in enforcing the Abortion Law against sincere religious practice, either in general or as to the plaintiffs," Klineman concluded.

An infamous former Republican state lawmaker recently appointed to the North Carolina State Board of Elections is resigning, after it emerged he violated state law to contribute money to political candidates while serving in that role.

According to The Assembly, Robert Rucho "donated to two county sheriffs" since joining NCBSE last year. According to public records, "Rucho wrote a $259 check to Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell in October and a $1,000 check to Catawba County Sheriff Don Brown in January. Brown has since returned the contribution. Both Campbell and Brown are up for reelection this year."

This is against North Carolina law, which says election board members cannot “make a reportable contribution to a candidate for a public office over which the State Board would have jurisdiction or authority.”

Rucho has also faced criticism for social media posts defending his former legislative colleague Phil Berger, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state — which is also a violation of the same law. As of Thursday, Berger trails his primary challenger, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, by just two votes, with a recount set to take place.

"Rucho didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In announcing Rucho’s resignation, neither the State Board of Elections nor the Office of the State Auditor cited a reason," noted The Assembly.

Rucho is most famous in national politics for having helped draw an extreme congressional gerrymander for Republicans in North Carolina, and being named as the principal defendant, then later appellate plaintiff, in the landmark Supreme Court case Rucho v. Common Cause, which ended with the right-wing majority of justices curtailing lower courts' ability to review gerrymandering on partisan grounds.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board lauded the dismissal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after a year of chaos and controversy at the department, grateful she is "finally" gone, and urged a "reboot" of the Trump administration's deportation policies.

"The Department of Homeland Security currently is operating in shutdown mode, without funding," wrote the board, referencing the standoff as Democrats demand reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Ms. Noem’s testimony before the Senate on Tuesday could have been a chance to put Democrats on the spot for refusing to fund DHS at a time of heightened threats, as Mr. Trump bombards the terrorist regime in Iran. Instead the headlines were about Ms. Noem’s floundering, including under hard questions from Republican Senators."

"Ms. Noem faced questions, and struggled to respond to them, about why she had initially defended the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by accusing them of domestic terrorism. She faced questions about what she described as 'aircraft being purchased that will be utilized for executive air travel and for deportations.' She faced questions about allegations, which she has denied, of a romantic affair with her aide Corey Lewandowski."

And perhaps most damning of all, she shifted the blame to Trump for a $220 million ad created by DHS that featured her prominently — which aside from being the likely ultimate catalyst for her firing, may have constituted perjury.

With Noem out, the board argued, Trump can at least put some marginally more capable people in charge, starting with his pick of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to take over the department.

"The empowering of border czar Tom Homan amid the Minneapolis mess was a good step for Mr. Trump, since Mr. Homan is a professional who talks about prioritizing public safety and conducting 'targeted' ICE enforcement against known illegal aliens in a humane fashion," wrote the board. "If Mr. Mullin is confirmed by the Senate, he can help the President by following the Homan approach and explaining it consistently without the political melodrama."

Byron Donalds, a pro-Trump Florida congressman currently running for governor and one of a handful of Black Republicans in Congress, issued a statement on Thursday condemning the group of Florida College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and Miami GOP officials who were caught exchanging virulently racist and antisemitic messages in a group chat.

"Everyone has the First Amendment right to say what they want — even when it's vile and offensive. But free speech doesn’t entitle someone to hold a leadership position within the Republican Party or the conservative movement. The comments reported run counter to the values our party stands for. The Republican Party rejects racism, antisemitism, and bigotry," Donalds said in a statement to The Floridian, which first broke the story on Wednesday.

The group chat was led by Miami Secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal and created after the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last year.

In the exchanges, local GOP student activists often used racial slurs to describe Black people, including Black people who were part of their group and had left as a result of it.

Some of the most vile invective came from William Bejerano, who previously attempted to organize an anti-abortion group at Miami Dade College. Bejerano flooded the chat with fantasies about killing and mutilating Black people, including "crucify filthy blacks," "curb stomp pregnant black n------," "exterminate n------ in the gas chamber," "feed n------ to alligators," "stomp n----- skulls with steel toed boots," and "drown n------ in fried chicken grease."

This comes as Donalds faces competition in his primary by hedge fund manager James Fishback, who has grabbed attention in the primary with a series of racist remarks, including comparing Donalds' campaign contributions to a slave auction, saying Donalds would turn Florida into a "section 8 ghetto," and fantasizing about former CNN reporter Don Lemon being lynched.

With the Texas Republican Senate primary advancing to a runoff between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, President Donald Trump — who has stayed out of the race for months — is being pushed by his advisers to make an endorsement.

But a new poll released on Thursday suggest if he does, it might matter less than he thinks.

The poll, issued by Blueprint, was flagged on X by former GOP strategist Tim Miller, and tested how the current state of the race would change if Trump endorsed either Cornyn, which appears to be what Senate Republicans want him to do, or Paxton. And what the poll found, Miller wrote, is that it "barely impacts the race" — no matter what happens, Paxton is leading.

The baseline result of the poll is that Paxton leads Cornyn 48-36 among current primary voters. The poll then tested what would happen if Trump endorsed Cornyn, in which case the race shifts to 44-37 Paxton — a shift in Cornyn's favor, but only a small one and not likely to decide the race.

The one case in which a Trump endorsement does appear to make a difference is if he instead endorses Paxton. In that polled scenario, the result is much more dramatic, with Paxton then leading 56-28 — but obviously, the winner of the election is unchanged.

Earlier this week, Trump suggested that if he endorses in the Texas Senate runoff, the candidate who doesn't get the endorsement should drop out of the race, which, if done early enough, would cancel the runoff and automatically hand the nomination to the remaining candidate under Texas state law.

However, Paxton made clear in an interview on Wednesday that if Trump endorses Cornyn, he's not leaving: "I’m staying in this race. I owe it to the people of Texas." He did, however, offer to drop his candidacy if Congress passes a stalled voter suppression bill Trump has been pushing aggressively.

President Donald Trump caught everyone off guard by suddenly firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — but being out of a job could just be the start of her problems.

That's because, according to at least some observers, the thing that appears to have prompted Trump to fire her may be a federal crime.

According to the New York Post, Trump said that Noem lied to Congress when she claimed during an intense hearing she had the president's personal sign-off for a $220 million ad campaign for the Department of Homeland Security that featured her prominently, riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore: "Two sources close to the White House told The Post that Trump is furious that Noem testified that he approved of the ads — and set in motion his later move to fire her."

The trouble is, she was under oath at the time she made the claims about getting Trump's approval for the ad — which, as Democratic strategist Matt McDermott pointed out on X, means that if Trump is telling the truth, Noem committed a federal crime.

"The President of the United States is accusing Kristi Noem of committing perjury, a federal crime," wrote McDermott.

To be in real legal jeopardy, Trump's Justice Department would have to actually prosecute Noem for the offense, which doesn't appear likely. However, many other observers noted the incredible facts of the situation.

"NOEM screwed up DHS response to Pretti killing, stonewalled IG investigations, has seen allegations of inappropriate relations with aide Lewandowski, bought luxury jet fleet, and spent a ton on ads starring hers truly," wrote former Politico reporter Rachel Bade. "But in the end the thing that did her in was throwing her boss under the bus."