Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed the Justice Department to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit over a Georgia law that former President Joe Biden had called “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”
During the Biden administration, the Justice Department sued over Georgia Senate Bill 202, arguing that the law “was enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color.”
The law forbids providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote and added additional voter ID requirements, among other provisions.
In a press release this morning announcing her move, Bondi said, “Georgians deserve secure elections, not fabricated claims of false voter suppression meant to divide us,” adding that the Justice Department would “never play politics with election integrity.”
Moving at a rapid-fire clip, Trump has been concentrating power in his hands, pushing the bounds of executive authority while effectively muzzling an array of voices that pose threats to his agenda.
Trump is using the multiple levers that a president commands both to neuter institutions he has scorned and reward others that align with his worldview. So far, Trump has targeted the legal community, universities, the arts, career government employees and the press and brought them to heel in some measure, willingly or not.
Trump said he was “very angry” and “pissed off” when Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership, adding that the comments were “not going in the right location.”
Agence France-Presse reported that Putin on Friday called for a transitional government to be put in place in Ukraine, which could effectively push out Zelenskyy.
“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said in an early-morning phone call with NBC News yesterday.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States,” Trump said. “There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.”
“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said in a phone call yesterday morning with NBC News, referring to his allies. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
Elon Musk began and ended his town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, yesterday by urging attendees to back conservative Brad Schimel in the state’s high-stakes Supreme Court election tomorrow.
But the bulk of Musk’s nearly two-hour event was ultimately focused not on the off-year election that he’s poured millions of dollars into — which he said could “affect the entire destiny of humanity” — but rather the work of his Department of Government Efficiency, with Musk outlining its purpose and defending its work against naysayers who’ve questioned the constitutionality of the sweeping cuts to the federal government overseen by the group.
Delving into the latest in a series of religious rights cases, the Supreme Court today considers whether Wisconsin officials wrongly concluded that Catholic-affiliated charitable groups were not eligible for an exemption from a state tax that funds unemployment benefits.
Although the state allows exemptions for churches and associated nonprofits, it concluded that the groups operating under the umbrella of the Catholic Charities Bureau of the Diocese of Superior were not sufficiently religious in purpose to receive the same treatment.
Trump said yesterday that reciprocal tariffs he is set to announce this week will include all nations, not just a smaller group of 10 to 15 countries with the biggest trade imbalances.
Trump has promised to unveil a massive tariff plan Wednesday, which he has dubbed “Liberation Day.” He has already imposed tariffs on aluminum, steel and autos, along with increased tariffs on all goods from China.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said it would be “entirely appropriate” for an inspector general to investigate the Trump administration’s use of Signal to discuss an imminent military attack and how a reporter was inadvertently added to the discussion, becoming among the first congressional Republicans to publicly back a probe into the matter.
“It’s entirely appropriate for the inspector general to be able to look at it and be able to ask two questions: One is obviously, how did a reporter get into this thread in the conversation,” Lankford said yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union. “The second part of the conversation is when individuals from the administration are not sitting at their desk in a classified setting on a classified computer, how do they communicate to each other?”
Lankford said resignation calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who outlined plans for the strike in the Signal chat, are “overkill.”
“He is stepping in and has actually led a very successful first attack here on somebody that had attacked the United States over and over again during the Biden administration and had very limited response,” Lankford said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., sent a letter last week to the acting inspector general of the Defense Department asking for a formal review of the official’s use of “unclassified networks” to discuss sensitive and classified information and the sharing of that information with “those who not have proper clearance.”
The two additionally requested a briefing before the Senate Armed Services Committee once the review is complete.
Wicker said last week he sent a similar letter to the White House in “an attempt to get ground truth,” and requested a briefing from a “senior person” on the matter.
“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” he told reporters.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday that he would introduce a bill to limit judges’ “ability to issue universal injunctions.”
The move comes as Republicans — and Trump himself — have slammed judges’ decisions that have contradicted the administration’s positions. Trump and his allies have called for the impeachment of judges who have issued rulings unfavorable to the White House.
“Under my bill, lower courts could no longer block legitimate executive action by issuing orders to nonparties to the lawsuit. The bill would also make TROs against the government immediately appealable, to make sure that prudence wins out over rash decisions handed down in the heat of a political moment,” Grassley said, referring to temporary restraining orders.
