Fans of President Donald Trump's MAGA movement flipped out on Wednesday after a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election was officially disbarred.
John Eastman, one of the architects of Trump's strategy to overturn his election loss, was disbarred in California, according to documents from the California Supreme Court. Eastman is the latest lawyer who has been disbarred for their efforts to help Trump. Others include Kenneth Cheesebro, Jenna Ellis, and Rudy Giuliani.
Several fans of Trump's MAGA movement reacted to the news on social media.
"The California Supreme Court sent a clear and terrorizing message: If attorneys represent disfavored political candidates who challenge disputed elections, California will disbar them," Mike Davis, an attorney with the Article III Project, posted on X. "While this happens in failed third-world countries, this should never happen in America."
"This is a travesty," Jeff Clark, a former Trump DOJ official involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, posted on X. "John represented the President in litigation challenging an election. That’s all. He lied about nothing. Reasonable minds can disagree about the 2020 election. He did what lawyers are supposed to do — represent disfavored individuals. And make no mistake, the elites, especially in bar apparatuses, disfavor and hate President Trump and anyone associated with him with a burning passion."
"This is disgusting and so wrong. California is corrupt to its core," Sidney Powell, one of Trump's former attorneys, posted on X.
"This is an injustice that will be overturned," MAGA influencer Douglass Mackey posted on X.
"An absolute injustice," Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, posted on X.
An election clerk in a far-right Michigan county has been purging voter rolls without authorization, Votebeat reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, the Michigan Bureau of Elections "sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes 'that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.'"
Bishop allegedly sent confirmation and cancelation notices to voters who had not participated in the last two elections, per the report — despite the fact, the letter noted, that “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.” She then altered the statuses of these voters in the Qualified Voter File, “without any agreement or delegation of authority allowing you to do so from the affected local jurisdiction.”
Bishop is a Republican who was first elected in 2024, and has ties to the Stop the Steal conspiracy theory movement that believes President Donald Trump was cheated out of winning in 2020.
"Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said that the bureau began looking into Bishop’s actions after receiving 'reports about concerning activity' from voters and local clerks alike," said the report. "From there, state officials looked at the QVF and found enough irregularities to prompt the requests to Bishop."
This is the latest in a series of improper actions taken by local pro-Trump officials to try to prove election rigging.
In the most famous case, Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, went to prison for a scheme to tamper with election equipment, and the Trump administration has been trying to bully the state to free her for months. More recently, Riverside County, California Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots from the anti-Trump Proposition 50 referendum to investigate them for irregularities, but was ordered to stop by the California Supreme Court.
A former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting the cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection issued a dark warning about the TrumpDepartment of Justice's latest "horrifying" move.
On Tuesday, the Trump DOJ announced it was moving to vacate the convictions of several high-ranking Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two paramilitary groups aligned with President Donald Trump's MAGA movement that helped organize and participate in the insurrection. Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, said on CNN's "The Lead" on Wednesday that the move would lead to more violence in the future.
"To see this asobviously horrifying, and Ithink it lays the foundation formore extreme acts," Ballou said. "Oneis the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers trying to sue thegovernment for monetary damages,which would be a great way forthe Trump administration toessentially fund paramilitaryand militia organizations thatare allied to him beyond the reach of the law."
"I think italso is part of a broader effortto rewrite the history ofJanuary 6th for a very specificreason, which is that if Donald Trump is able to get people toeither forget about January 6thor worse yet, condone January6th, then he knows he's going tobe able to convince people toaccept any attack on democracy," he continued. "So this isn't just about thepast, it's about the future."
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly apologized to one of her colleagues on Wednesday after she made what she described as "hurtful" comments about his family.
Speaking at the University of Kansas School of Law last week, Sotomayor said Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh "probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour" in response to a question about a recent case concerning immigration law. In the case, Kavanaugh argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents should be allowed to conduct what's known as "roving stops" to check someone's immigration status.
Sotomayor apologizes for her remarks on Wednesday, CNNreported.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said in the statement. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague."
New photos obtained by PunchUp have revealed an inside look at the former private jet of now ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The Substack from Daily Beast journalist and broadcaster Tom Latchem featured images of the $108 million Boeing 737 MAX, which has been given to first lady Melania Trump and other cabinet members.
The jet's price tag has been a question — and who is paying for it — after the Department of Homeland Security had previously reported it was estimated at $70 million. PunchUp sources have said it's actually valued at 54 percent more than what DHS had claimed.
The images of the plane's interior have revealed more information about what was inside the plane, which Noem reportedly flew in with her long-rumored lover and special government employee Corey Lewandowski, according to reports. It features brown shag carpets, a gray marble bathroom and a square toilet with a padded, cream-colored leather lid.
"You’d also have to ask why anyone would choose to spend such a staggering amount of money on a plane that looks like a ski chalet designed by the production team behind the Austin Powers movies," PunchUp reported. "Or, as one administration source told PunchUp: 'The plane’s ‘shagtastic’ interior resembles a 70s Motel 6 off the Jersey Turnpike.'"
WASHINGTON — Catholic Democratic senators rallied behind Pope Leo XIV after President Donald Trump called the first American-born pontiff "weak on crime," blasting the president's broadside as a step too far — even by Trump's standards.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) summed up the sentiment of his colleagues with characteristic simplicity.
"I'm with Team Pope," Welch told Raw Story on Wednesday. "What can you say?"
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) took a more pointed approach, noting the logical absurdity of Trump's attack.
"The Pope does not have a law enforcement agency under its control," Markey said. "The Pope only stands for justice and fairness to make sure that innocent people like Jesus Christ is not illegally prosecuted. And the same thing is true now for the illegal prosecution of immigrants in the United States."
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), a lifelong Catholic, was appalled by the president's comments.
"That's just sad. That's disgraceful," Lynch said. "It's crazy."
Trump's attack on Leo came after the pontiff criticized the administration's Iran war, calling the escalation of violence "unacceptable" and warning against the "delusion of omnipotence." Trump responded on Truth Social, calling Leo "weak on crime" and "terrible on foreign policy."
The feud marked an extraordinary moment in American political history.
Pope Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, last year became the first American-born pope. Trump's attacks on him proved uniquely jarring for the roughly 20 percent of Americans who identify as Catholic, a voting bloc Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
Trump has also separately posted and deleted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, drawing condemnation from Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders, and even some of his most loyal MAGA supporters.
The panel on CNN's "The Lead" broke out laughing on Wednesday as one of President Donald Trump's loyalists in the Department of Justice made his life much harder.
Trump has been trying to remove Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell from his post for months over Powell's insistence that interest rates remain elevated to combat inflation. At one point, the president accused Powell of causing more than $500 million in cost overruns on the Federal Reserve headquarters renovation project, a figure Powell has publicly described as "inflated."
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has taken the baton to investigate Powell, but that investigation is currently holding up the nomination process for Kevin Warsh, whom Trump has nominated to succeed Powell when his term ends on May 15.
CNN host Phil Mattingly joked about Pirro's investigation on "The Lead."
"What's another result is having Kevin Warsh as Fed chair on May 16th, which they could get if they dropped the prosecution," Mattingly said, laughing. "I feel like I keep saying this, but someone has to be connecting these dots here."
In a new headache for New York Republicans, a legal challenge has been filed that could result in the party fielding no candidate for the 18th Congressional District.
According to The Highlands Current, the complication started with the GOP's nominee for the district, currently represented by combat veteran and former Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, dropping out of the race. Sharanjit “Sunny” Thind, a Manhattan businessman and former Nassau County human rights commissioner, abandoned his campaign and endorsed a new candidate to replace him on the ballot.
"Jackie Mary Auringer, 29, who grew up in Kingston, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on April 10," said the report. "According to her campaign website, she earned a marketing degree from Florida Gulf Coast University and is a project manager and accountant for her family-run construction business. While living in Florida, she founded Palm Beach Conservatives and served as an officer of the Palm Beach Federated Republican Women, according to The New York Post."
The problem, said the report, is that Thind may have been ineligible for the ballot in the first place — and because the deadline for nominating petitions has already passed, the GOP can only use Thind's paperwork to get Auringer on the ballot.
But that could be a problem, the report continued, because "on Monday, the Ulster County clerk, Taylor Bruck, said in a news release that he had filed a challenge with the state Board of Elections to Thind’s nominating petitions. Bruck, a Democrat, alleged that Thind falsely claimed to live at an address in Lagrangeville and that his petitions did not include line numbers for each signer, which 'prevents proper review of signatures and undermines the ability of election officials to evaluate the petition.'"
If the challenge is successful, it would mean Republicans could not field a candidate in the 18th District at all, giving Ryan, who represents a fairly competitive district that only voted for Democrats by 3 points at the presidential level, a glide path to re-election.
All of this comes after Republicans' efforts to mount serious opposition to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul fell apart, with Rep. Elise Stefanik's hotly anticipated gubernatorial campaign collapsing early, despite direct pleas from President Donald Trump to stay in.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) unloaded on the Trump administration's attempts to investigate the Federal Reserve for allegedly mismanaging the headquarters renovation project in a new interview on Wednesday.
Tillis spoke to a reporter from The Associated Press on Wednesday, where he described the investigation as “bogus, ill-timed, ill-informed."
Tillis added that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is making matters worse for the Trump administration by pursuing the investigation, as it will ultimately extend the time Powell serves in his role. Tillis described Pirro and her team as being "asleep at the switch."
Tillis also suggested that Pirro's investigation blindsided the Trump White House.
“They should have consulted with the White House, because I’m sure if they would have, (the White House) would have said, ‘no, we can wait,’” Tillis told the AP.
Tillis's comments came just a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Pirro's prosecutors attempted to secretly enter the Federal Reserve renovation site and were turned away by security guards. They were attempting to enter the site as part of the DOJ's investigation into whether Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell caused cost overruns exceeding $500 million on the project.
Last year, Trump claimed the total cost of the renovation project had been inflated from $2.7 billion to $3.3 billion. Powell fact-checked those claims on live TV, claiming that Trump had added the costs of a completely separate project to inflate his figures.
The investigation has also stalled the nomination of Kevin Warsh, who Trump has tapped to lead the central bank when Powell is scheduled to depart in May. Powell has said he will stay on as acting Chairman until his successor is appointed, setting the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve on yet another collision course.
President Donald Trump has used the word "loser" to describe plenty of his enemies, but now that insult might be coming back to haunt him, an analyst said on Wednesday.
The New Republic's Matt Ford discussed how Trump's Iran war has suspended trade through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively "the geopolitical equivalent of stabbing the global economy’s femoral artery." Iran has taken control of the channel, and although Trump has argued that the United States has won the conflict, the world does not see it as he does.
"This is what happens when losers are elected to lead the world’s only superpower," Ford wrote.
Trump has surrounded himself with people, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have openly expressed a similar sentiment — "whose worldview is driven by personal grievances against the world."
"Fascism and loserdom go hand in hand because fascism is predicated on the notion that the fascist has been unjustly cheated and robbed, and that only through force can they restore and revitalize themselves," Ford wrote. "Fascists idolize losers because no fascist society has ever flourished and because they see themselves reflected in other people’s failures. It is fitting that Trump and his allies have lavished praise and public statuary upon Robert E. Lee, a Virginia-born colonel who is best known for leading a failed rebellion against the United States on behalf of a slaver aristocracy in the South."
"The goal of Trumpism, it could be said, is to create losers of us all," Ford added. "The political and economic project’s goal is not to materially improve its adherents’ lives. Instead, it is to create a sense of social order for some people that offers an aesthetic sense of improvement, even as one’s standard of living declines in real terms."
Far-right Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) put out a cryptic post on X Tuesday suggesting that there are "allegations" against an unspecified senator, and demanding that Senate Majority Leader John Thune investigate.
"It’s seems like the Senate has its own trash to take out," said Luna. "@LeaderJohnThune You need to look into the allegations against one of your Senators, it’s very disturbing. My chief will be contacting your chief."
Luna did not elaborate on who the senator in question was.
This comes after Luna was one of the most strident voices in the Republican Party for a bipartisan expulsion vote on four members of Congress, three of whom were accused of sexual misconduct, and one of whom was accused of embezzling disaster relief funds.
Two of the members in question, Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX), responded to the expulsion threats by putting in their resignations this week.
SantaCon founder Stefan Pildes was mocked to his face after the FBI arrested him on wire fraud charges.
Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York alleged on Wednesday that Pildes diverted more than $2.7 million raised for charity to his personal expenses.
"As alleged, Stefan Pildes promoted SantaCon as an event grounded in charitable giving, but instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game," U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. "He took advantage of New Yorkers' generous holiday spirit to finance his lifestyle through personal expenses, big and small. No matter how you dress it up, fraud is fraud. We are committed to protecting New Yorkers from those who exploit their enthusiasm and generosity."
Following his release on $300,000 bail, reporters mobbed Pildes outside the New York courthouse.
"Would you like to comment on these charges against you?" one reporter asked.
"Do you think you're getting a lump of coal for Christmas?" another reporter said.
A reporter noted that nearly $3 million was missing from SantaCon, but Pildes continued walking without responding.
"The FBI says you stole Christmas," one correspondent pointed out.
"Our station has covered this for years," another said, "and we just wanted to know if there's any comment, anything you have to say to these people, anything to the allegations at all?"
Last month, Meenu Batra, 53, who has lived in the South Texas border colonia of Laguna Heights since 2002, was on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work another case. She’s been a court interpreter for over 20 years, the only one licensed in Texas for Hindi, Punjabi, or Urdu. Her language skills are requested nationwide, where she’s contracted to help people making their way through the immigration court system, just as she did for herself 35 years ago when she immigrated from India to New Jersey before settling in Texas.
She planned to meet with her adult children in Austin after the Wisconsin trip, the only difference she foresaw in an otherwise typical trip. Her routine for years included flying from either Harlingen or Brownsville to far-flung parts of the country where South Asian immigrants needed language access. For this trip, the flight was out of Harlingen.
But, around 5 p.m. on March 17, Batra was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after passing through security at Harlingen International Airport. In a sworn deposition that was filed as part of a petition for habeas corpus—a legal request to be released on the grounds that the detention is unlawful—Batra said the people who arrested her did not have visible badges nor were they wearing uniforms. One of those agents had asked Batra if she knew she was in the country illegally and that she had a deportation order. She replied that her work authorization status, which she applied for regularly after being granted a legal status called withholding of removal by a New Jersey immigration judge decades ago, was good for another four years.
“That doesn’t mean you can be here forever,” the agent replied. Two more plainclothes agents would join the two that detained her, bringing her down the escalator and to the front of the airport.
“Having watched and read enough news, I know that the moment you say something, they accuse you of evading arrest or whatever other things,” Batra told the Texas Observer. “So, being mindful of all that, mindful of the whole line and being embarrassed in front of everybody, I just complied.”
Batra’s attorneys say the agents were targeting her. “This is someone who maybe had one speeding ticket in the last 30 years and [is] being treated like a notorious criminal,” Deepak Ahluwalia, a California and Texas-based immigration attorney representing Batra, told the Observer.
People who are granted withholding of removal are typically immigrants who face persecution in their home countries, like those who receive asylum. Batra, who is Sikh, left India after her parents were murdered during a state pogrom against Sikhs in the 1980s. But, unlike asylum, withholding of removal does not come with a path to a green card.
Though people with Batra’s protection still have deportation orders, they cannot be removed to where they came from. If they are deported, the United States must send them to a “third country” that will accept them. The United States has agreements with at least 27 nations, a list the Trump administration has grown, that it’s paid up to $1 million a person to accept deportees. Many of these deportation flights leave from the Harlingen airport where Batra was detained.
ICE has not said where it plans to send Batra, according to her habeas filing.
After placing her in handcuffs, she said, two of those four agents at the airport drove Batra to ICE’s field office in Harlingen in an unmarked van. She had been there many times over the years to renew her work permit and to help attorneys with translation. Office staff recognized her as she was being processed. Agents posed for photos with her handcuffed, which they said was for “social media,” according to the habeas filing.
Batra was moved through various holding cells for 24 hours without food or water, first in Harlingen then in the El Valle Detention Center outside of Raymondville, in neighboring Willacy County. As of mid-April, she remains there without access to the consistent medical care she needs following surgeries she had in December. Within days of being in the facility, she caught a respiratory illness and lost her voice. She was supposed to see her doctor, in Harlingen, the week she was detained.
“I think it’s a real example of what the administration is doing in terms of its mass deportation plan and who it’s targeting,” Edna Yang, the co-executive director of American Gateways, an Austin-based legal services nonprofit, told the Observer. “It’s not targeting criminals, it’s not targeting dangerous people, it’s targeting individuals who are members of our community, who have a lot to offer and continue to offer a lot of positive things for our entire country and our society.”
Batra’s habeas petition included dozens of letters from people in her community and beyond asking for her to be released from detention. Cameron County Precinct 1 Constable Norman Esquivel, a Republican elected official and fixture in Laguna Madre-area politics, and several judges across the country are among those who authored a letter.
Batra’s attorneys argue that in the decades she’s had her legal protection the U.S. government never told her that it was planning to deport her, and that her detention violated her right to due process. One of Batra’s children recently enlisted in the military and filed a parole application for her. If granted, Batra could remain in the country in one-year increments. Her attorneys have also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to prevent ICE from moving her to another detention center.
In response to an Observer request for comment, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson noted that Batra had “a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2000” and said “She will remain in ICE custody pending removal and will receive full due process.”
The spokesperson continued: “Employment authorization does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States,” adding that the department is encouraging all “illegal aliens” to “self-deport.”
Nationwide, Texas is leading in habeas petitions from people detained by ICE. Most federal judges are siding with detained people, ordering them to be released or to receive a bond hearing before an immigration judge.
Batra, who has spent nearly half her life working in immigration courts, stopped working for the government’s side in immigration proceedings—instead helping only the immigrants seeking status—after seeing the conditions in detention facilities and how detained people were treated. Now, on the other side herself, she’s seeing people at the Raymondville facility who don’t speak English or Spanish, who are without the same knowledge and connections she has after so many years of helping people like them through the same system.
“I am grateful also, because something bad has to happen in life for you to truly appreciate what you have,” Batra said. “But I am getting this experience, and I’m watching the other women and just realizing how much help they need. At least I have awareness. I know my rights.”
DHS has until April 21 to respond to Batra’s habeas petition, according to court filings.
