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‘It’s scary’: Dem candidate speaks out after Trump admin’s ‘surreal’ prosecution of her
Progressive Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh spoke out against President Donald Trump's administration for prosecuting her after she participated in a protest against an immigration raid in her home state of Illinois.
The indictment, which was filed on Oct. 23, accuses Abughazaleh of one count of conspiracy and one count of forcibly impeding an officer. Abughazaleh told NBC News that she plans to self-surrender to authorities next Wednesday and described the incident as "political prosecution."
Abughazaleh joined Jon Lovett, a former Obama administration staffer, on a new episode of the "Pod Save America" podcast on Thursday, and further discussed the prosecution.
"It's scary. It's surreal, and it's also totally expected," she said. "This is what this administration does. They go after people who disagree with them, and this case is an attempt to criminalize protest, to criminalize freedom of speech, and to criminalize freedom of association."
"This is what authoritarians do," she added. "They try to find any excuse to punish their political enemies, to punish populations they deem as enemies. We've seen that a lot in how ICE is functioning."
Abughazaleh noted that the Trump administration has admitted to catching very few criminals during its immigration raids. She suggested that reveals something more sinister about the raids.
"That is one of the best examples to show that this has never been about crime," she said. "This has never even been about immigration. This is about securing and cementing power for the Trump administration."
Ex-GOP spokesperson rails that red states are suffering due to Trump’s cuts
Former Republican Tim Miller, who hosts a podcast for the conservative anti-Trump news outlet The Bulwark, discussed with MSNBC host and former Republican Nicolle Wallace that the GOP is stiffing its own voters with slashes to food stamp benefits.
"I know food stamps is like a 90s era right-wing racist smear, but SNAP, which is sort of the new EBT — this is food assistance. [It] knows no partisan affiliation. If anything, it disproportionately benefits households in Trump voting counties and districts," said Wallace. "And it feeds a whole lot of kids who don't have any responsibility for any of the political decisions that adults make."
Miller noted that the GOP's rhetoric has clearly shifted from the days of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT).
"But the policies are harmful to them. And this ... the expiration of SNAP — or the fact that they're not going to continue funding SNAP during this shutdown, beginning this weekend, I think is the most acute example of this, where, you know, if the party had fully switched to being a multiracial, multiethnic, working class party like they pay lip service to, this would be an emergency right now," said Miller.
The situation would involve Republican lawmakers fearful "our own voters are literally going to go hungry beginning this weekend. You know, we need to serve to service them. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's in China or in Korea getting a, you know, Burger King happy meal crown from the head of South Korea. And Congress isn't even in session, right? Like they're not doing anything."
He called it a catastrophe and a tragedy if the problem isn't fixed in the coming days.
"But it's also a very stark demonstration of just how this kind of MAGA populism is a lot of lip service and not a lot of action," Miller continued. "And you're seeing it in real time also in the states where, you know, in Colorado, Jared Polis and some other states, governors, mostly Democratic governors, are working to try to patch this right now. And in some of the red states, it's not going to get patched."
‘That’s my question!’ CNN host frustrated as guest rattles off GOP soundbites
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar pressed Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-FL) over the issue of a proposed a Medicaid work requirement as Republican lawmakers consider making cuts to pay for President Donald Trump's mega spending bill.
Trump met with Republicans on Capitol Hill Tuesday to motivate them to iron out their differences over the bill since he can only afford to lose three GOP votes in order to pass it.
Keilar noted that almost 140,000 of Patronis's constituents received Medicaid, which worked out to "roughly one out of every six people."
She asked if any of them would "lose Medicaid coverage" if the new work requirement for "able-bodied" people went into effect before 2029, as the congressman preferred. And she asked for clarification on who constituted an "able-bodied" person.
"For example, should a young adult male in your district who is in the throes of addiction be expected to meet those requirements while in rehab?" Keilar asked.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
"Right now, a young adult male in the state of Florida is not eligible for Medicaid unless he's disabled or has some other type of disability that's given that pathway," Patronis answered.
"Well, I'm asking if he should be eligible, facing a medical issue like that," Keilar said.
"So, that individual does not have access to expanded guaranteed Medicaid health benefits if he's an able-bodied male, because it's not part of Florida's acceptance into that program," Patronis answered.
Keilar then asked about the nation as a whole, not just Florida.
Patronis said, "When you've got able-bodied males that have the ability to go out and seek employment in order to maybe secure health insurance to the private sector, that frees up dollars for disabled, for elderly, for women. So again —"
Keilar interrupted, "Is that person abled-bodied, though? Sir, that's my question! But, congressman, that's my question. Is that an able-bodied person, someone who is in rehab dealing with addiction?"
After a lengthy debate, Patronis concluded, "I definitely want to make sure that the elderly or seniors are women or children — that they always have a robust safety net that always takes care of them. That is the purpose of Medicaid."
‘Null and void’: Judge demands DOGE action reversed in major slap for Trump
A judge ruled against President Donald Trump's administration in a decision Monday over the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney posted on X.
The USIP's goals are to promote conflict resolution and peacebuilding globally through a congressionally funded, independent, non-profit organization, its website says. Judge Beryl Howell said that having the executive branch take it over is not legal and "should be treated as null and void," said Cheney.
Trump established DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, through an executive order upon entering office on Jan. 20. The goal was to make significant budget cuts to reach $2 trillion in savings by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse," as tech billionaire Elon Musk described in a March Fox News interview.
ALSO READ: 'I would not be happy': GOP senator wants DOGE to back off as agencies heads confirmed
Among those cuts was the USIP — which is actually under the purview of Congress, not the president.
Judge Howell's ruling reads: "As an independent entity exercising inconsequential government power and de minimis, if any, executive power, Congress’s ability to restrict the President’s removal power is even greater than that outlined in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197 (2020), and the Supreme Court’s other seminal presidential removal power cases. Applying those cases, Congress’s restrictions on the President’s removal power of USIP Board members are squarely constitutional, and the President and his Administration’s acts to the contrary are unlawful and ultra vires."
"The actions that have occurred since then—at the direction of the President to reduce USIP to its 'statutory minimums'—including the removal of USIP’s president, his replacement by officials affiliated with DOGE, the termination of nearly all of USIP’s staff, and the transfer of USIP property to the General Services Administration ('GSA'), were thus effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void.
Trump official rakes in $150M tax-free with ‘ethics agreement’: report
President Donald Trump's commerce secretary Howard Lutnick is emulating his boss by transferring away "his ownership interests in multiple affiliated companies" to trusts that will benefit his adult children, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Lutnick, a billionaire, served as chairman and chief executive of financial-services firm Cantor Fitzgerald until he was appointed to Trump's cabinet in February.
In keeping with "a government ethics agreement," Lutnick created the trusts to benefit sons Brandon Lutnick and Kyle Lutnick, "as well as Lutnick’s other adult children."
In addition, former Cantor Fitzgerald affiliates "agreed to buy back more than 16.4 million shares of its stock from Lutnick," leaving him $151.5 million richer.
Add to that $127 million from real-estate adviser Newmark Group, which agreed to buy back 11 million shares from Lutnick, the company's former executive chairman.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
"Lutnick won’t have to pay capital gains taxes on the sales as long as he puts the proceeds into Treasuries or a broadly based mutual fund — assets that don’t pose a conflict of interest," Bloomberg reported.
Brandon Lutnick, who serves as chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald said in a statement, “Kyle and I are honored to continue building on our father’s legacy, leading Cantor Fitzgerald alongside the exceptional executive team we have in place today."
Donald Trump has come under fire for remaining in charge of his businesses despite transferring his assets to "a trust managed by his children while he is working overtime to lead the country to economic prosperity," according to a White House spokesperson.
The New York Times reported this month that sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have raked in billions of dollars in recent deals that "directly benefit the president."
The deals include a luxury hotel in Dubai, a residential tower in Saudi Arabia, two cryptocurrency ventures, a new golf course complex in Qatar, and a new private club in Washington that "will personally benefit not only Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but also President Trump himself," the Times reported.
Read The Wall Street Journal story here.
‘Confused libs’: Don Jr. flips out at backlash over his Biden cancer joke
Donald Trump Jr. accused Democrats of not being able to take a joke about former President Joe Biden's stage four prostate cancer.
In a post on X, Trump wondered how former First Lady Jill Biden, a doctor of philosophy, could have missed her husband's cancer and called it a "coverup."
"What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup?" he asked.
The president's son faced backlash online for failing to understand the difference between a PhD and a medical doctor.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
"I sometimes forget that part of the mental disorder of leftism is an inability to understand sarcasm," Trump wrote Monday in his defense. "So for the confused libs out there, I'm well aware that Jill Biden is a fake doctor, not a real one...Unlike the Dems who were calling for her to be Surgeon General in 2020."
Trump ended his missive with a clown face emoji.
Trump explodes as he’s bombarded by ‘nasty questions’ on Air Force One
President Donald Trump didn't hide his disgust when asked Friday why he was allowing white South African farmers into the United States but "closed off that door" to many other refugees.
A U.S.-funded charter flight brought close to 60 Afrikaner families to the the U.S. state of Idaho earlier this week under a humanitarian program designed for people fleeing war or persecution.
Afrikaners are white South Africans of Dutch descent.
"What message does that send? Why is that fair?" the reporter is heard asking on an audio recording made aboard Air Force One as Trump returned to the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East.
EXCLUSIVE: Breastfeeding mom of US citizen sues Kristi Noem after being grabbed by ICE
“I think if I see people in distress, I don’t care what color, what they look like, what anything—their size, their height, their eyes. I don’t care,” he said.
“But, I think that from all evidence, the farmers in South Africa are being treated brutally. And it’s been reported, and nobody wants to cover it, but they happen to be white. And if they were Black, I’d do the exact same thing. And we treat people very well when we see there’s a genocide going on,” he said. “So if it’s a genocide, that’s terrible. And I happen to believe it could very well be.”
In February, the South African courts ruled that talk of a "white genocide" is merely a myth.
Trump then branded the reporter's question as “nasty.”
“And I’m not looking for reporting because, believe me, it’s easier for me not to do anything. It’s a lot easier because I don’t get nasty questions like that,” the president said.
“But the fact is that we’re about saving lives, and we’re gonna do that. So we’ve made a home, and we’ll make a home for other people that are treated badly, no matter what their color.”
Trump asks Supreme Court to let him resume mass purge
President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to lift lower court orders preventing him from continuing his mass firings of the civil service, reported The Associated Press on Friday.
These firings have been on hold in part due to a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco last week.
The report noted that the lawsuit in question was brought by an array of plaintiffs, including "the cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and Baltimore; the labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and the nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights, and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks."
EXCLUSIVE: Breastfeeding mom of US citizen sues Kristi Noem after being grabbed by ICE
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, "questioned whether Trump's Republican administration was acting lawfully in trying to pare the federal workforce," the report noted.
She "directed numerous federal agencies to stop acting on Trump's workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management," although her order will expire on its own next week.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to slash personnel at agencies across the board, much of it with the blessing of tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force.
In many cases, these firings had to be walked back simply because critical functions broke. In one of the most high-profile cases, Trump fired hundreds of vital workers at the National Nuclear Safety Administration and had to re-hire many of them.
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‘It’s scary’: Dem candidate speaks out after Trump admin’s ‘surreal’ prosecution of her
Progressive Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh spoke out against President Donald Trump's administration for prosecuting her after she participated in a protest against an immigration raid in her home state of Illinois.
The indictment, which was filed on Oct. 23, accuses Abughazaleh of one count of conspiracy and one count of forcibly impeding an officer. Abughazaleh told NBC News that she plans to self-surrender to authorities next Wednesday and described the incident as "political prosecution."
Abughazaleh joined Jon Lovett, a former Obama administration staffer, on a new episode of the "Pod Save America" podcast on Thursday, and further discussed the prosecution.
"It's scary. It's surreal, and it's also totally expected," she said. "This is what this administration does. They go after people who disagree with them, and this case is an attempt to criminalize protest, to criminalize freedom of speech, and to criminalize freedom of association."
"This is what authoritarians do," she added. "They try to find any excuse to punish their political enemies, to punish populations they deem as enemies. We've seen that a lot in how ICE is functioning."
Abughazaleh noted that the Trump administration has admitted to catching very few criminals during its immigration raids. She suggested that reveals something more sinister about the raids.
"That is one of the best examples to show that this has never been about crime," she said. "This has never even been about immigration. This is about securing and cementing power for the Trump administration."
Ex-GOP spokesperson rails that red states are suffering due to Trump’s cuts
Former Republican Tim Miller, who hosts a podcast for the conservative anti-Trump news outlet The Bulwark, discussed with MSNBC host and former Republican Nicolle Wallace that the GOP is stiffing its own voters with slashes to food stamp benefits.
"I know food stamps is like a 90s era right-wing racist smear, but SNAP, which is sort of the new EBT — this is food assistance. [It] knows no partisan affiliation. If anything, it disproportionately benefits households in Trump voting counties and districts," said Wallace. "And it feeds a whole lot of kids who don't have any responsibility for any of the political decisions that adults make."
Miller noted that the GOP's rhetoric has clearly shifted from the days of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT).
"But the policies are harmful to them. And this ... the expiration of SNAP — or the fact that they're not going to continue funding SNAP during this shutdown, beginning this weekend, I think is the most acute example of this, where, you know, if the party had fully switched to being a multiracial, multiethnic, working class party like they pay lip service to, this would be an emergency right now," said Miller.
The situation would involve Republican lawmakers fearful "our own voters are literally going to go hungry beginning this weekend. You know, we need to serve to service them. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's in China or in Korea getting a, you know, Burger King happy meal crown from the head of South Korea. And Congress isn't even in session, right? Like they're not doing anything."
He called it a catastrophe and a tragedy if the problem isn't fixed in the coming days.
"But it's also a very stark demonstration of just how this kind of MAGA populism is a lot of lip service and not a lot of action," Miller continued. "And you're seeing it in real time also in the states where, you know, in Colorado, Jared Polis and some other states, governors, mostly Democratic governors, are working to try to patch this right now. And in some of the red states, it's not going to get patched."
ICE sent into frenzy to return longtime Trump golf employee mistakenly deported to Mexico
A longtime former employee at one of President Donald Trump's golf clubs was mistakenly deported to Mexico, The New York Times reported — sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a mad scramble to correct the error and bring him home.
"Alejandro Juarez stepped off a plane in Texas and stood on a bridge over the Rio Grande, staring at the same border that he had crossed illegally from Mexico 22 years earlier," reported Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz. "As U.S. immigration officials unshackled restraints bound to his arms and legs, Mr. Juarez, 39, pleaded with them. He told them he was never given a chance to contest his deportation in front of an immigration judge after being detained in New York City five days before."
As it turned out, the Department of Homeland Security had mistakenly put him on a deportation flight instead of sending him to a detention facility in Arizona ahead of his immigration hearing, to which he was entitled.
"Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge — a hearing Mr. Juarez never had," said the report. "ICE officials raced to decipher his whereabouts, exchanging bewildered emails and contacting detention facilities to pinpoint his location, according to internal ICE documents obtained by The New York Times. It is unclear how many other immigrants like Mr. Juarez have been erroneously removed, in part because ICE has not in the past tracked such cases."
Juarez "had worked for more than a decade at a Trump Organization golf club in New York," noted the report, and suddenly found himself expelled from the United States.
Similar administrative mistakes have happened on other occasions, most notably with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from his family in Maryland to the infamous CECOT megaprison in his home country, despite a court order prohibiting his removal there. After months of denying they had jurisdiction to repatriate him, the Trump administration finally did so, but then immediately hit him with flimsy gang charges, and started shopping around for any other country that would accept him, including several in Africa.
