Political News

The White House on Wednesday asked Congress for an additional $87.6 billion to cover costs incurred by President Donald Trump’s boondoggle of a war in Iran, as well as to bail out farmers who have been hurt by Trump’s idiotic trade policies, and to fund Trump’s vanity construction projects in Washington, D.C. As for where the $87.6 billion would go, the vast majority ($67.1 billion) would go…

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Alligator Alcatraz, the infamous Florida detention camp, will be closed, Governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday.

DeSantis said the detention center, where immigrants described worms in their food, floors flooded with sewage, and enormous bugs, was not meant to be a permanent installation, the AP reported.

“It served its purpose for the time,” DeSantis said at a press conference.

Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected nearly a year ago, and has been described by many as a concentration camp. The detention center was temporarily closed earlier this month in advance of hurricane season, and lawyers said that they didn’t hear from their clients being held at the facility for over a week. The detainees have since been scattered between South Florida, California, Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas, reported the AP.

Rumors began in May that the detention center would soon be closed, after Florida officials told President Donald Trump that it cost $1 million each day to operate.

Though one symbol of Trump’s inhumane immigration crackdown is disappearing, the mass deportation campaign continues. ICE is still terrorizing neighborhoods, and Trump’s assault on free speech and dissent is well underway.

DeSantis said at the press conference that 21,000 people were deported through Alligator Alcatraz. That’s 21,000 people who had to endure toilets that didn’t flush, bugs in their food, sweltering heat, and freezing cold—treated like “rats in an experiment,” as one detainee told CBS.

Tom Kean Jr. was once lost, but now he is found. At home in Westfield, New Jersey, waiting for you in a suit and tie, with his wife silently smiling in the background.

Sound strange? Well, that’s how the New Jersey Republican greeted a New York Times reporter on Wednesday night, the first sighting since effectively vanishing in March due to an undisclosed health condition and missing more than 100 votes in the House. Kean’s absence sparked intense speculation, particularly in the lead-up to his primary election earlier this month. (He ran unchallenged, made zero campaign appearances, and won.)

So what was it like to see Kean in the flesh? Honestly, it seemed unsettling!

He could be seen from the street on Wednesday evening, standing in a brightly lit front room of his Westfield home just before 8:45 p.m.

“It’s good to see you,” he said after a reporter for The New York Times rang his doorbell. He was wearing a dark suit and a red tie. “I’ll talk to you next week,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mr. Kean’s wife, Rhonda, stood in the background, smiling pleasantly. He declined additional comment and closed the door.

Last week, Kean’s office announced that the congressman would return to Congress on June 30 and finally explain the mystery surrounding his monthslong absence. But will Kean explain walking around one’s house in formalwear? At bedtime? What about the ghost stock trades? That’s what I want to know.

Elizabeth Warren had to explain to President Trump’s pick to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers that 4.2 percent is more than 3.4 percent.

At a confirmation hearing Thursday for Christopher Phelan, the Democratic senator was making the point that inflation is outpacing wage growth, thereby diminishing Americans’ purchasing power.

“You’ve already told me inflation is 4.2 percent, right? What’s the annual wage growth right now?” Warren asked Phelan, an economist at the University of Minnesota.

“I do not have that in front of me right now,” he said.

Warren sighed. “It’s 3.4 percent. So let’s put this one together. Is 4.2 higher than 3.4?” she asked.

“I will repeat what I said, which is: Real wage growth in this administration is positive,” Phelan said, ignoring Warren’s obvious point that inflation was rising faster than wages.

“Right now families are falling behind,” Warren replied. “These are facts that come out of the Trump administration, they’re there for anybody to see. And you can’t bring yourself, as the person who sits there and says, ‘I want to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisors,’ to give objective economic advice, and you can’t even say ‘yeah, inflation is running higher than wages right now.”

“I think this person has disqualified himself,” she concluded.

Here’s video of the exchanged, via The Bulwark:

Sen. Warren: "What's the annual wage growth right now? It's just a facts question."

Phelan: "I do not have that in front of me right now."

Warren: "It's 3.4%. So let's put this one together. Is 4.2% higher than 3.4%?"

Phelan: "I will repeat what I said, which is real wage… pic.twitter.com/G01jYmgPYX

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 25, 2026

Rep. Dan Goldman didn’t just lose his primary Tuesday. He got trounced. With roughly 90 percent of votes counted, the incumbent New York congressman is trailing former city comptroller Brad Lander by more than 30 points. Goldman lost the Democratic primary despite his campaign spending more than $7 million—$2 million of which came directly from Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Lander’s victory is extraordinary. As a general rule, congressional incumbents don’t lose their primaries by dozens of points, absent personal or professional scandals. Goldman, who was first elected in 2022, has none. The exception to that rule is members of Congress who find themselves severely out of step during times of ideological realignment within their party. That is what happened in New York’s 10th Congressional District, which covers lower Manhattan, the wealthy neighborhoods of Brownstone Brooklyn, and sections of south Brooklyn. 

A related dynamic played out in New York’s 7th and 13th districts, where Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier—two left-wing candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America—defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Valdez leads Reynoso by more than 20 points, while Avila Chevalier—who ran in a less DSA-heavy district and was seen as a weaker candidate than Lander or Valdez—narrowly prevailed over Espaillat.

Israel and Gaza played a major role in the bitter contest between Goldman and Lander. Both men are self-described liberal Zionists who vocally condemned Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack. But beyond that, their approaches to Israel diverge drastically.

In November 2023, Goldman was one of just 22 Democrats who voted to censure his colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) after she shared a video that included the line “from the river to the sea” to show her support for Palestinian rights. Last year, Goldman broke with most of his party by voting to sanction the International Criminal Court after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas military commander. 

During a debate earlier this month, Goldman said he was “proud” to march in this year’s Israel Day parade in New York. Lander chose not to, saying he would not be attending “while Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, violating international law, [and] violating Palestinian human rights.” His differences with Goldman when it came to Israel, he said, were “profound.” 

Lander and Goldman are both Jewish candidates who were running to represent one of the most Jewish congressional districts in the country. But Lander’s views on Israel appear to be much more in line with those of fellow progressive Jews in neighborhoods like Park Slope. (As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz has written, Lander’s children are named after a Jewish leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a Jewish labor organizer.)

Lander’s victory wasn’t just about Israel. The former city comptroller is about as known a quantity in Brownstone Brooklyn as a politician can be. Before being elected comptroller in 2021, he represented Park Slope and nearby neighborhoods on the New York City Council for more than a decade. While in that role, he successfully pushed a major rezoning in Gowanus that has led to a boom in housing construction in the neighborhood. 

Lander’s background and wonkish affect are also a natural fit in a progressive district that includes the Park Slope Food Coop. After growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, he attended the University of Chicago and became a Marshall Scholar. He later moved to Brooklyn, where he bought his home for a now-unimaginable price of $655,000. He is a quintessential Park Slope dad whose enthusiastic Pride-flag-waving has garnered affection on social media.

When Lander ran for mayor last year, he was considered one of Andrew Cuomo’s top rivals before Mamdani surged in the polls. But he accepted likely defeat rather than try to take Mamdani down. Toward the end of the primary, the two candidates cross-endorsed each other to take advantage of New York’s ranked choice voting system. After the mayoral election, Mamdani endorsed Lander in his bid to unseat Goldman.

Mayoral candidate Brad Lander was cuffed and detained by ICE agents after asking to see a warrant for people who were detained after an immigration hearing. Video from the city comptroller’s press secretary @chloecbristow. She says he’s still being held in 26 Federal Plaza. pic.twitter.com/cW9jIsp35b

— Jeff Coltin (@JCColtin) June 17, 2025

In Donald Trump’s second term, Lander has emerged as a prominent champion of immigrants’ rights. Last June, while running for mayor, he was arrested at a Manhattan immigration courthouse while trying to escort a man out of the building. Shortly before being detained, he told a reporter, “I don’t think there’s any place that’s more important to be right now than bearing witness and trying to stand up for the rule of law.” 

In September, he was arrested again at the same federal building, along with other Democratic officials, after demanding to inspect immigration detention facilities. Earlier this month, he was found not guilty of charges stemming from that arrest.

Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as lead Democratic counsel during Trump’s first impeachment, was always an odd fit for the district. When he first ran in 2022, he spent nearly $5 million of an inheritance worth up to $250 million. Doing so allowed him to effectively buy his way through a crowded, low-turnout primary. He prevailed with just 26 percent of the vote—2 points above his closest challenger. 

In 2022, Goldman, a rich Manhattanite, did best in wealthy sections of the island, like Tribeca and the West Village. He did much worse in more left-leaning and gentrified parts of Brooklyn. The dynamic repeated itself in the 2024 primary. Despite not facing a serious challenger—his main opponent spent less than $40,000—Goldman ended up with only 65 percent of the vote. In some areas, he actually lost—an obvious sign that he was vulnerable to being primaried.

Still, the scale of Lander’s victory is shocking. In some election districts (the New York equivalent of precincts), Lander appears on track to win more than 90 percent of the vote. Overall, Lander is winning Brooklyn by 45 points. And in Manhattan—Goldman’s home turf—Lander is up by about 10 points.

From an electoral perspective, the scale of his victory is reminiscent of recent primaries in which moderate Republicans have been ousted by right-wing challengers. In 2022, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) ended up with 66 percent of the vote against Liz Cheney—the same percentage Lander has now. 

Hageman and Lander, of course, belong to opposing parties and hold wildly different views. But they represent similar intraparty upheavals. In Wyoming, the lesson in Hageman’s race was that the GOP had no room for criticizing Trump, let alone voting to impeach him. In New York, Lander’s victory shows that being the public face of a Trump impeachment is no longer enough for Democrats. The party’s voters are increasingly unwilling to tolerate representatives who enable an Israeli state responsible for genocide.

Less than 24 hours after carrying out the American public’s desires and voting in opposition to President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, a pair of Republican senators joined the majority of their party in voting to support the president’s unpopular “excursion.” Previously, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted alongside Democrats for a war powers…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Trump threatens to sue over reporting on Reflecting Pool scandal…

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Is Peter Thiel running the world via a “secret society” called Dialog?

Rumors are swirling after a list of Dialog’s attendees and members leaked to the public. It includes journalists, politicians, tech figures, academics, and corporate leaders.

The revelation inspired a massive outcry because Dialog is an off-the-record conference of elites—a detail which led some to liken it to a Jeffrey Epstein-like conspiracy. That’s an understandable response when people hear that a creepy Epstein-connected billionaire is quietly convening influential figures on both the political left and right to discuss topics like how to prepare for World War III and how to “Build-a-Cult.”

Such a ridiculous format makes an easy target for conspiracy narratives and mockery. But what is Dialog, really?

Here’s what I wrote on BlueSky last week:

This ain’t the Illuminati, but it is an example of social soft power at work. It accelerates networking between chosen elites, who put aside their differences to form a unique social bond. The agreement on secrecy breaks down barriers, uniting participants in a conspiracy.

Not necessarily a conspiracy to rule the world … but a conspiracy of shared elite status...

Beware, however: Secrecy is a powerful marketing weapon. It makes outsiders think something profound is happening—even if it’s just a sappy conference of dorks. Careful not to give the thing more power than it has.

Over at America 2.0, independent journalist and researcher Dave Troy offers a highly informed and thoughtful take. Troy writes that Dialog is “something more consequential, if less sensational: a long-running influence network…built around light-touch social engineering, that trades on Thiel’s name while operating at arm’s length from him.”

Writes Troy:

Thiel himself is barely there—no hand in running Dialog, rarely present—and the network sits at the loose end of a wider web he backs. Others in that web, working far more directly to place allies in positions of power, have drawn little of the scrutiny now falling on it.

Troy cautions against drawing extreme conclusions about anyone who has ever attended Dialog. I encourage you to read the entire essay. Troy talks to Dialog participants who shed light on how they got involved and what really happens there.

Click here to read: Exclusive: Peter Thiel’s Least Secret Network Is Just One Small Part of a Global Influence Machine.

My take: Participation in Dialog certainly raises some questions—especially for journalists who either paid $16,000 to attend an off-the-record conference or else received discounts, which is potentially more problematic (given journalism ethics rules). Now that the guest list has leaked, the promise of discretion that made Dialog attractive is exactly what’s working against everyone on it. The next time someone gets an invitation to a mysterious off-the-record retreat, they’ll likely do some research first.

Dialog provides a window into the process of how wealthy elites like Thiel and his cronies build quiet networks of influence at various levels. While viral Instagram memes comparing Dialog to an Epstein-style scandal went overboard, they show the degree to which Thiel has become a universal boogeyman who symbolizes elite conspiracies for global control. But the reality is more complex—and alarming—than one snotty private dork conference.

25% off The Nerd Reich book at Barnes & Noble!

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Use the code PREORDER25. To get the discount, you have to sign up for B&N’s rewards program (it’s easy and free). Offer ends 6/26 (Friday).

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Michael Boulos, sat in on official meetings in the United Arab Emirates because he’s a good friend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

Rubio met with UAE leaders while on a diplomatic trip to the Middle East. Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s husband, was apparently there to see his brother.

“He was there to see his brother that lives here—he was just there to see me and catch up,” Rubio later told reporters while in Kuwait City.

“But there was a working lunch, right?” one reporter asked.

“There was, but he wasn’t—the conversations around him had to do with—he was just here because his brother lives here, and I’m a good friend of Michael’s, so we had a chance to catch up,” Rubio stammered.

Marco Rubio on why Trump's son in law, Michael Boulos, who has no government role, was in his official meetings in Kuwait: "He was just here because his brother lives here and I'm a good friend of Michael's, so we had a chance to catch up" pic.twitter.com/YsSGoomMe3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 25, 2026

The working lunch in question was attended by UAE President Mohamed Bin Zayed. Boulos was pictured sitting next to Rubio in the middle of the table.

“Met with UAE’s President @MohamedBinZayed in Abu Dhabi, where we discussed President Trump’s MOU with Iran, efforts to secure full and safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and regional stability,” Rubio posted on X Wednesday, sharing a full photo of the group.

Boulos is a businessman with no government role. But that hasn’t stopped the president’s close relatives from meeting with world leaders before. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump broker deals across the globe, which definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that daddy is the president.

The Supreme Court has delivered President Trump two significant victories in his mass deportation campaign.

On Thursday, the court’s conservative majority voted 6-3 in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado to approve the “metering” policy, which allows Border Patrol agents to turn away migrants seeking asylum from the Mexican side of the southern border. The policy—introduced under the Obama administration and heavily expanded under Trump—will put the asylum hopes of hundreds of migrants and refugees at risk.

“We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not ‘arriv[e] in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country. An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border,” Alito wrote in the majority opinion.

In another 6-3 ruling, Mullin v. Doe, the conservative majority approved the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protective Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, putting them at greater risk of being deported back to the dangerous situations they fled from under TPS. These are both countries that the State Department has deemed too dangerous for Americans to travel to.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to strip TPS from Haitian and Syrian communities is a betrayal of our values and of the promise our country made to protect people from displacement and harm,” New York Attorney General Leticia James wrote after the ruling. “I’ll never stop fighting for our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his decision not to sign a landmark housing bill that was overwhelmingly passed by the House and Senate, saying that he doesn’t want to lower housing costs because it would hurt people who have gotten rich off their home purchases. “You have to understand—I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump said in the Oval Office…

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The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the biotechnology corporation Monsanto on Thursday, saying the company did not have to include a cancer warning on a pesticide label. In a 7–2 ruling which crossed ideological lines, the justices wrote that a federal pesticide regulation shields the company from lawsuits from people who allege that their cancer was caused by Roundup, the weed killer in question.

Regulating glyphosate, the potentially cancerous ingredient in question, is a hot-button issue for the Make America Healthy Again crowd. And they’re not happy.

In April, Vani Hari, also known as The Food Babe, rallied outside the Supreme Court against Monsanto. On Thursday, she wrote on X, “I am literally sick. This is a devastating blow to every family that trusted our justice system.”

“Every elected official now has a choice: stand with families harmed by toxic chemicals or stand with the corporations that profit from them,” she wrote.

For MAHA, the Supreme Court case is a betrayal: The White House sided with Monsanto in the case, and President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year promoting glyphosate production. Glyphosate is one of the most common pesticides used in agriculture, and Trump framed his executive order as a way of protecting Americans’ food supply.

Alex Clark, a “wellness” podcaster and Turning Point USA member, similarly lamented the ruling on X.

“Today the Supreme Court made it impossible for people who develop cancer after using Roundup to sue Bayer for failing to warn them about the potential cancer risk,” she wrote. “The Trump administration URGED and PLEADED the Court to reach this result to protect a FOREIGN chemical company—and it did at the expense of Americans. What happened to America First?”

Bayer, the company that owns Monsanto, is German.

If MAHA feels like the Trump administration has abandoned them, it may mean trouble at the polls. Kelly Ryerson, an activist who goes by “Glyphosate Girl,” told MS NOW that the ruling may not push MAHA to the left—but that doesn’t mean they’ll keep backing Trump.

“They’re not going to vote; they’re going to be done with voting,” she warned before the ruling.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson just accused the Supreme Court of caring more about guns than the actual law.

The court issued a 6–3 decision Thursday along ideological lines to scrap Hawaii’s law prohibiting gun owners from taking their weapons onto private property without obtaining express permission. In a dissent written by Jackson and joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson argued that the court had failed to faithfully apply its own jurisprudence.

“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law,” she wrote.

Jackson argued that the court had incorrectly applied, and obscured the purpose of, a two-step legal test to prove if the Second Amendment had been violated, established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.

At step one of Bruen, the court must determine whether the “plain text” of the Second Amendment covers the challenged action. Jackson claimed that it didn’t. The law being challenged, Act 52, required gun owners to receive affirmative consent from a property owner before bringing their firearm onto private property.

“This case is about property rights, not gun rights,” Jackson wrote.

“There is no constitutional right to enter private property without the owner’s permission, let alone with a firearm,” she added. “So the question this case presents is merely how a property owner must communicate his decision to exclude or to invite armed carry, including whether a State may alter the background property-law rules that set the default as one or the other. The Second Amendment has nothing to say about that.”

Additionally, Jackson argued that the challenge also failed at step two of Bruen, which requires the government to justify the regulation by showing it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of regulating firearms. But Hawaii’s history must also be taken into account, Jackson argued, as there is no tradition of concealed carry on the islands. “In this way, Hawaii’s use of its prerogative to protect the interests of its residents is consistent with its own traditions,” she wrote.

In obscuring Bruen, Jackson argued the court had opened the door to more chaos. “From this day forward, it will be difficult to view Bruen as anything more than a fig leaf,” she wrote. “The Court’s effort to rein in judicial discretion has resulted in an arbitrary rule that unleashes judges to thwart gun regulation at every turn.”

On Thursday, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to a humanitarian program that protects immigrants who can’t safely return to crisis-stricken countries. The decision effectively allows the Trump administration to move forward with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 nationals of Syria and Haiti who are living and working in the United States.

It also paves the way for the administration to potentially end the protection for several other countries experiencing wars, environmental disasters, and extraordinary circumstances. That push, which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has called the “largest de-documentation event in US history,” could strip away legal status from more than 1.3 million TPS holders from 17 designated countries.

In a 6-3 decision, the Court’s conservative supermajority sided with the federal government’s arguments that the executive branch’s determinations about TPS aren’t subject to judicial review. The Trump administration claimed that Congress, in enacting the 1990 statute that created the program, gave the Department of Homeland Security secretary full discretion to designate a country for protection, as well as to extend or terminate that designation.

The justices held that the federal law bars the courts from reviewing “non-constitutional” claims related to the humanitarian program. They took a broad view of the judicial bar provision in the TPS statute, which states that “[t]here is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” They said “determination” encompasses not only the secretary’s final decision, but also the process to get there.

The majority also found that the Haitian TPS holders challenging the termination of the protection were likely to fail when they argued that the Trump administration violated the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against them based on race. “None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial,” Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, said of the Trump administration’s disparaging public comments about Haitian migrants, “and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.”

The consequential ruling comes in a case that consolidated two lawsuits—Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe—challenging the termination of TPS for more than 300,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The Court agreed to hear the case in March after the Trump administration applied for a stay of lower court decisions postponing the terminations. Unlike in other similar TPS cases, the justices preserved the status quo, keeping protections against deportation for these groups in place while reviewing the government’s arguments.

Under the statute, the DHS secretary can designate a country for TPS for up to 18 months, after which time they’re required to conduct a review and assess whether country conditions continue to merit this designation before determining if it should be terminated, extended, or re-designated. Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a devastating hurricane, and its designation has been repeatedly extended. 

On June 16, lawyers representing Haitian immigrants asked the Supreme Court justices to dismiss the case and allow the lower courts to resolve it in light of new evidence supporting their arguments that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of TPS for Haiti was a “preordained outcome” and that she had moved to end the protection even without receiving a recommendation from the State Department. 

During her tenure, Noem tried to end the program for as many as 13 nations, including Venezuela, Yemen, and Afghanistan. District courts found that Noem violated requirements of the statute when terminating or, as in the case of Venezuela, vacating an existing extension of TPS designation, including by failing to properly consult with other relevant federal agencies on country conditions.

Then-Secretary Noem took “a hatchet to the TPS system,” US District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla of New York wrote in her decision finding that the termination of TPS for Syria was arbitrary and capricious. “Once the Secretary was confirmed, she endeavored to terminate TPS status whenever presented with an opportunity to do so, resulting in termination decisions that are grounded not in law and not in fact, but that are in political considerations simply not relevant under the TPS statute.”

In the case concerning Haiti, District of Columbia federal Judge Ana C. Reyes concluded earlier this year that the evidence suggested that Noem’s decision to end the protection for that population was motivated, at least partially, by racial animus, given President Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about Haitian migrants. She also noted that while Congress gave the secretary ample discretion to make determinations about TPS, the goal in passing the statute was to standardize discretionary temporary protections and insulate them from political whims.

Last year, the Supreme Court twice tossed district court rulings blocking Noem’s actions against TPS for Venezuela, allowing the Trump administration to revoke protected status from hundreds of thousands of people pending appeal. In a dissent last October, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson chastised the Court for granting the government’s application for a stay in the Venezuela case.

“I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in lower courts while lives hang in the balance.”

“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” Justice Jackson wrote. “This Court should have stayed its hand. Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.” She added: “I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in lower courts while lives hang in the balance.”

During the oral arguments for Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe in April, the liberal justices expressed skepticism at the government’s theory that the secretary’s decision-making process regarding TPS isn’t reviewable by the courts. “What was the point of Congress putting this statute into being and having requirements for the Secretary if there was no ability for anyone to challenge the Secretary’s compliance?” Justice Jackson challenged Solicitor General D. John Sauer. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that Congress could have been explicit about terminations of TPS being unreviewable, but it didn’t.

The lower courts found that Secretary Noem had failed to adequately consult with the State Department about country conditions, in violation of procedural requirements. Justice Jackson offered a hypothetical, asking if the secretary could use a Ouija board when deciding to terminate the protection, or randomly pick countries for designation from slips of paper in a hat.

They also addressed the plaintiff’s claims that the government’s push to terminate TPS for Haiti had been motivated by racial animus against non-white migrants. Justice Sotomayor said it was hard to see how Trump calling Haiti and other countries “shithole” places and accusing migrants with TPS of “poisoning the blood” of the United States as indicative that a “discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision.”

The conservative justices, on the other hand, appeared receptive to the government’s arguments that TPS “determinations” are beyond the federal court’s review power. The plaintiffs counter-argued that the DHS secretary’s final decision about terminating TPS may be immune to judicial review, but the procedural steps to make such a determination aren’t.

“After today,” Justice Elena Kagan dissented in Thursday’s ruling, “a Secretary can announce to the world that she didn’t consult with anyone—more, that she didn’t evaluate country conditions at all—before making, extending, or terminating a TPS designation.”

Todd Schulte, president of the advocacy organization FWD.us, called the Court’s decision “an astonishing human tragedy.” The ruling, he said in a statement, was “an awful harbinger for what we expect this administration to try to do for other TPS designations. Hundreds of thousands of people who have lived here for decades now see heartbreaking chaos ahead.”

“We’re talking about the power to mass expel people who have done nothing wrong to countries that remain unsafe,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, the attorney arguing for the Syrian plaintiffs. “And our view is it is unlikely that a refugee protection statute would have given that power to the Secretary.” The question before the Court, Arulanantham said in a statement following the April oral arguments, was whether the government could “ignore the law when it tries to take away someone’s immigration status.” Judging by the justices’ ruling on this case, the answer appears to be yes.

Two ICE agents harassed a poll worker on Election Day, demanding she remove social media posts they claimed threatened federal agents, according to Syracuse.com.

Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker in Syracuse, New York, said she received a phone call Tuesday from two ICE agents asking to meet with her. Not wanting to meet with them alone, she invited them into her work. “I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”

The ICE agents arrived with copies of her social media posts and driver’s license, and handed her a warning notice alerting her that they were investigating her for allegedly threatening ICE personnel. “They tried to scare me into signing it while I was working,” she said. The agents told her to “remove and/or discontinue” the behavior, according to the notice, which Gonyea shared on Instagram.

Gonyea frequently posts about immigration on social media. She believes the investigation was prompted after she shared a news article in January identifying Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted,” she wrote in the caption.

Gonyea did not believe that her post or caption qualified as doxxing. “I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she told Syracuse.com.

Ross, who was only placed on three days of administrative leave for shooting Good in the head, chest, and arm, faced virtually no consequences for killing an innocent woman in broad daylight. It appears that federal law enforcement now view pleas for actual justice as some kind of threat.

“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”

Kevin Ryan, the Republican Elections Commissioner, spoke with polling employees about whether it was a hoax, and confirmed with the Department of Homeland Security that a visit had been made.

Dustin Czarny, the Democratic Elections Commissioner, said that election law prohibits anyone but poll workers, elections inspectors, and voters from entering a polling place. “There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” he told Syracuse.com. “There is no indication of that here.”

Gonyea’s experience is just the latest example of how far federal law enforcement is willing to go to silence critics of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Earlier this week in Texas, a man received a 30-year prison sentence for transporting leftwing zines linked to a protest at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility. Others involved in the protest received sentences of up to 50 years.

Additionally, the intrusion of ICE agents into a polling place on Election Day should raise serious red flags amid concerns that Trump could use federal law enforcement to intimidate voters in future elections.

Two filings in separate slush fund cases last week threaten to reignite the political firestorm in Congress over the fund and its prospective use to handsomely reward January 6 offenders.

In a case challenging the fund brought in the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Leonie Brinkema had handed the Department of Justice a clean way to close out Floyd v. Department of Justice, the case challenging Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Without exactly ordering Justice to do anything, she offered the department an off-ramp: if Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent file a declaration, under penalty of perjury, stating that they will not take any action to create or operate the fund and that it “will not proceed in any manner, or under any name,” it would, in her words, “avoid any further litigation in this civil action.”

The alternative, Brinkema made clear, was that she would issue a scheduling order and require DOJ to answer the complaint by July 17.

DOJ filed its response to the offer last Friday. Rather than submit the requested declaration, DOJ argued that the declarations were “unnecessary” in light of Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances in Congress that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund. The department argued those words sufficed to moot the case and that Brinkema’s request “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”

That separation-of-powers argument is the filing’s most blustering move, and its weakest. DOJ leans on so-called apex-doctrine cases holding that senior officials shouldn’t get dragged into litigation when their testimony is available through other channels. That doctrine is meant to keep litigants from harassing busy executives over matters peripheral to their actual duties. It’s not a real separation-of-powers principle.

But Blanche and Woodward aren’t peripheral here. Woodward signed the settlement agreement himself, an unusual move clearly meant to impress Trump, and Blanche put his own name on the filings defending it. Having made themselves the line attorneys on this deal, they can hardly now claim their testimony is marginal.

Moreover, DOJ’s obstreperous response keeps the focus on the question it doesn’t want to answer rather than the question it does. Although Brinkema entered a preliminary injunction not long after receiving the complaint, the five plaintiffs have an uphill road to climb to establish standing. The plaintiffs are two individuals, a city (New Haven), and two public-interest organizations. They’ve been harmed by the administration’s zealous immigration initiative but their claims of individualized injury based on the slush fund itself are tenuous.

On the other hand, the administration has a weak hand to play for the mootness argument. Their adamant, repeated contention is Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund suffice to moot the case. Under any conventional mootness analysis, this isn’t a moot settlement agreement. The test is whether the defendant has shown it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” And the burden falls on the party asserting mootness and is especially “heavy” if based on voluntary dismissal, as it was here.

Blanche’s unsworn assurances, coupled with the refusal to formalize them, don’t begin to cut it legally. For starters, Blanche already has made clear that Trump’s every wish is his command. And Trump continues to insist that he favors the fund: He recently told Meet the Press that “if it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.”

Trump here isn’t simply the final authority. He is also the beneficiary of a supposed settlement agreement, which is akin to a contract. That makes it his prerogative to enforce. Until Trump, the actual beneficiary of the settlement, agrees to rescind it, DOJ’s say-so doesn’t make the fund disappear as a legal matter.

More fundamentally, the legal question on the table is not what Blanche said to Congress. It’s whether those words, combined with DOJ’s adamant refusal to put anything in writing, are enough to make the settlement agreement moot as a matter of law. Brinkema is well within her rights to conclude they are not. The same day DOJ filed its response to her, a group of 35 retired federal judges filed a brief replying to a brief Trump had filed for the plaintiffs in the case, including his sons and companies.

That case sits before Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida, where Trump’s original lawsuit against the IRS was dismissed in May after a “settlement” that conjured the Anti-Weaponization Fund into existence.

The 35 judges’ reply brief treats DOJ’s abandonment of the fund not as evidence the dispute is over, but as fresh proof that it was never real to begin with. As they put it, the fact that one “side” of the supposed dispute could unilaterally scrap a $1.776 billion settlement term without so much as a revised written agreement makes it clear the parties colluded, in which case a federal court can’t hear it. In other words: The very retreat DOJ is offering Brinkema as proof of mootness, retired judges in Florida are offering Williams as proof of collusion.

Far worse for DOJ and Trump’s lawyers, Williams is weighing whether both sides defrauded her with the contrived filing and settlement, a finding that could brand the agreement bogus and expose the lawyers who signed it to sanctions. She hasn’t ruled yet, and she may stop well short of taking on such a bitter fight, with the 11th Circuit in a position to countermand her. But the question is now squarely hers to answer.

Two weeks ago, in a separate filing opposing the plaintiffs’ TRO motion, DOJ made essentially this same mootness case on the same Blanche testimony, and I wrote at the time that the argument was headed straight into a buzzsaw. Its strategy since has been to tell Congress and the courts “no worries” because the fund is dead. But that’s far from true as a legal matter, and it’s also no response to the possible fraud on the court that the lawyers perpetrated.

The fund collapsed last month under bipartisan political pressure, after Republican senators balked at funding compensation for people who assaulted police officers on January 6. Enough of them seemed willing to take Blanche’s word for it and drop the subject. But if the courts reject DOJ’s mootness claim, that reopens exactly the controversy Blanche’s testimony was supposed to close. The fund would be undead, again the living nightmare that Republicans and the administration thought they had buried.

I caused a great deal of commotion yesterday with the unfortunately titled piece, “Why Democrats need their own Trump.” Many people understandably never got past the headline. The point wasn’t that Democrats need a Trump-like figure. It was that Trump has exposed just how much power the presidency actually has once you stop treating norms and traditions as untouchable. But others read the…

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As Taylor Swift prepares to marry towering Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, the Grammy-winning megastar might have decided to do so on a date that would put President Donald Trump to shame. The president’s makeup-covered hands have been full with piecing together “Freedom 250” events to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. On a musical note, those efforts once included a concern…

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Some are calling it the Democratic Tea Party. While establishment Democrats are still downplaying Tuesday night’s primary wins by democratic socialists, progressives say that the New York victories of Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier represent a new era in Democratic politics.

“I think this is a preview for the national Democratic Party,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a progressive group which endorsed Valdez in New York’s 7th district and Avila Chevalier in New York’s 13th. “Democratic leadership needs to wake up to the fact that they are clearly out of step with their most active, vocal, and energized base of voters.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on the other hand, spent Wednesday trying to downplay the fact that candidates endorsed by democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani beat the ones Jeffries had endorsed.

“The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements, and he’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward,” Jeffries told reporters on the Hill on Wednesday.

Jeffries backed incumbent Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman, who lost to Avila Chevalier and Lander, respectively.

The results are arguably personal for Jeffries: On Tuesday night, a group of DSA members chanted “You’re next,” threatening to run a socialist against him in 2028. In fact, the socialist organization almost challenged Jeffries this cycle, but Mamdani said that trying to unseat Jeffries would be a distraction from DSA’s “affordability agenda.”

When asked if he was concerned about being unseated in 2028, Jeffries said: “When you ask me a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer.”

Representative Rashida Tlaib, a democratic socialist herself, told The New Republic that she’s looking forward to having new allies in Congress. “I welcome them, and I’m looking forward to working with them to get Medicare for All passed, to try to get clean water and clean air for our families,” she said. “I’m proud of them,” she added.

Other Democrats’ reactions might best be described as circumspect. Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive who didn’t endorse in the New York races, gave an optimistic, if vague, statement to The New Republic when asked about the results. “We need a bold progressive vision for 2026 and 2028 and a new deal for our time,” he wrote in a message.

The jury is still out on whether Tuesday’s results are isolated to New York or indicative of a broader shift in the Democratic Party. Progressive strategists are hoping it’s the latter.

“I think this meaningfully advances an entire progressive agenda,” said Andrabi, pointing to how the soon-to-be House members could push for Medicare for All and block military funding to Israel.

“New York City Democratic primaries are a specific thing in that New York DSA has an incredibly strong ground game, Zohran Mamdani is incredibly popular, and it’s a very blue area,” Ryan O’Donnell, the executive director of Data for Progress, admitted. “But I think there’s also a lot of things that can be extrapolated nationwide.”

O’Donnell cited Data for Progress polls that found that voters see candidates who don’t stand up to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as untrustworthy on other issues and that democratic socialist policies like Mamdani’s have nationwide appeal.

He shared Andrabi’s optimism that these victories would push the direction of the party: “When you see victories as large as these, and when you grow your numbers in Congress, it tends to change parts of the party more broadly.”

President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair was off to a rocky start.

Dozens of attendees Wednesday were seen flocking toward the exits in the middle of Trump’s address, which was meant to kick-start the two-week event.

Crowds flock towards the exit in the middle of Trump's speech. pic.twitter.com/bM3DPhsM4M

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 25, 2026

Rather than celebrating America’s 250th anniversary during his speech, Trump chose to focus on the last two years of his disastrous presidency, the BBC reported. Within half an hour of the president beginning to speak, the crowd had thinned out significantly, according to The Bulwark’s Jared Poland.

And one person was even spotted sleeping.

Trump’s snooze-worthy speech comes after several musical performers pulled out—leaving FBI Director Kash Patel’s country singer girlfriend with a great new gig. Trump’s kick-off event also featured several military flyovers and music provided by the U.S. Army Band Downrange. The president delivered a brief, albeit highly partisan address, which finished after just 30 minutes.