"Where you can find almost anything with A Click A Pick!"
Go to content
US Monthly Headline News
Story by Amanda Marcotte

Because Donald Trump himself wasn't indicted, there was a surprisingly muted response to the announcement, late on Wednesday, that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes had indicted a school bus full of Republican activists and operatives on felony charges related to Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 election. There's a real "Trump himself or it doesn't count" bar regarding interest levels in coup-related cases. The previous indictment for the same scheme in Georgia did include the former president, leading to his infamous mug shot from the Fulton County Jail. Plus, Trump himself is on trial in New York on charges of cheating in the 2016 election, leading to a stream of images of him looking bedraggled as he goes in and out of court. Hearing that Rudy Giuliani is getting arrested again just can't compete.

But it's time to take a longer look at these Arizona charges because they will have a major impact on Trump personally, even if he is not indicted (yet) for his role. These charges further erode his already-collapsing support system. Trump goes to court most days without family or friends, just his lawyers and security, people who are paid to be there. Despite his endless pleading, he can't get his followers to show up to demonstrate outside the courthouse. The people who were willing to commit crimes to keep him in office in 2020 now have to face the real possibility that sticking by Trump's side raises their chances of going to prison. Even those foolish enough to take that risk, I suspect, are going to be too busy trying to fend off criminal charges from the last attempted coup to have much time to help Trump with planning the next one.
"Obviously, I don't think that," the Senate minority leader said.
By Josephine Harvey

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday presidents should not be immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken in office, as the Supreme Court considers the issue.

“Obviously, I don’t think that,” McConnell told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker when asked about the assertion, which former President Donald Trump has brought to the nation’s highest court.

“But it’s not up to me to make that decision,” he continued. “The president clearly needs some kind of immunity, or he’d be in court all the time. So we’ll see how the Supreme Court deals with it.”

In 2021, McConnell said there was “no question” Trump was to blame for the U.S. Capitol riot, but he voted nonetheless to acquit Trump after he was impeached by the House. But McConnell argued that Trump “didn’t get away with anything, yet.”

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being [held] accountable by either one,” he said.
Story by Ben Blanchet

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) suggested that the Republican National Committee headquarters could house the Supreme Court after conservative justices appeared open to recognizing some form of presidential immunity as it heard from former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Thursday.

Raskin, in an appearance on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” weighed in after Trump lawyer D. John Sauer argued that the president could order an assassination of a political rival or order the military to stage a coup without facing prosecution for the actions.

Host Joy Reid, who noted that Trump’s federal election interference case could be remanded back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and thus further delay the trial past Election Day, called the Supreme Court majority “so clearly politicians” before looping in Raskin.

Story by Nicholas Liu

Wisconsin GOP operative Carlton Huffman is blowing the whistle on what he claims was an effort to suppress Black votes ahead of the 2020 election. While unproven confessions from a disgraced figure accused of sexual assault may be viewed with suspicion, the text messages he revealed to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel implicate new Wisconsin GOP executive director Andrew Iverson in an apparent 2020 election plot to sabotage "Souls to the Polls," a Black-led voter turnout group.

"Can Mario [Herrera, head of Hispanic outreach for Trump Victory] help get some Trump supporters to participate in Souls to the Polls?" Iverson texted Huffman on Election Day. "'Can't wait to go vote for President Trump!' Wearing [sic] MAGA hat or something."

The then-Wisconsin state head of Trump Victory continued: "I'm excited about this. Wreak havoc."

Iverson released a statement claiming that the text messages were jokes not meant to be taken seriously. But Huffman said that he didn't take them as such at the time. He told the Journal-Sentinel that Iverson was trying to suppress the Black vote by forcing Souls to the Polls to divert valuable resources on Trump supporters.
Story by Ewan Palmer

The indictment in the Arizona fake electors plot unsealed on Wednesday contains one piece of "gold" evidence for prosecutors, a legal expert has said.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes' office has charged 18 people, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, lawyer Jenna Ellis and longtime Donald Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn in connection with a plot to allegedly falsely claim that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. The former president has not been charged as part of the probe but is referred to as "Unindicted Coconspirator 1" throughout the indictment.

Former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman noted one section of the indictment suggesting that those close to Donald Trump were aware of a plan to certify "illegal votes" as part of their alleged scheme.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Goodman highlighted a section of the indictment that discussed how some members of Trump's inner circle refused to support the alleged fake electors scheme.

The rape conviction of movie producer Harvey Weinstein has been overturned by New York's highest court.

The New York Court of Appeals, in a scathing 4-3 opinion, overturned Weinstein's conviction on sex crimes against three women, finding the trial judge "erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes."

The court said that testimony "served no material non-propensity purpose" and "portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light."

Ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker detailed the plot to “help” the Trump campaign during his bombshell testimony in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. Former SDNY attorney Maya Wiley and Lachlan Cartwright, former Executive Editor with American Media Inc, join MSNBC’s Katie Phang.
ABC News

Former President Donald Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani are unindicted co-conspirators in the Michigan attorney general's case against the state's so-called "fake electors" in the 2020 election, a state investigator revealed in court on Wednesday.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 Republicans last year with forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery for allegedly attempting to replace Michigan's electoral votes for Joe Biden with electoral votes for Trump at the certification of the vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
An array of former associates described Trump's treatment of government secrets.
By Katherine Faulders, Mike Levine, and Alexander Mallin

In the summer of 2019, only hours after an Iranian rocket accidentally exploded at one of Iran's own launch sites, senior U.S. officials met with then-president Donald Trump and shared a sharply detailed, highly classified image of the blast's catastrophic aftermath.

The image was captured by a U.S. satellite whose true capabilities were a tightly guarded secret. But Trump wanted to share it with the world -- he thought it was especially "sexy" because it was marked classified, one of his former advisers later recalled to special counsel Jack Smith's investigators, according to sources familiar with the former adviser's statements.

Worried that the image becoming public could hurt national security efforts, intelligence officials urged Trump to hold off until more knowledgeable experts were able to weigh in, the sources said. But less than an hour later, while at least one of those intelligence officials was in another building scrambling to get more information, Trump posted the image to Twitter.
Story by Josh Marcus

A grand jury indicted 11 Arizona Republicans and seven others for their role in an alleged scheme to keep Donald Trump in the White House by falsely certifying the state’s 2020 election results as a Trump win.

The indictment accuses the group of trying to prevent “the lawful transfer of the presidency of the United States, keeping President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”

According to the indictment, one month after the election, 11 Trump-supporting Republicans convened at the state’s GOP headquarters in Phoenix to sign certificates claiming the state’s electoral college votes.

The meeting was recorded on video.
Story by Andrew Stanton

Mike Davis, an ally to former President Donald Trump, has listed several legal analysts as "potential targets" for investigation if Trump beats President Joe Biden in the November presidential election.

Himself a lawyer, Davis is president of the conservative group Article III Project that supports "Constitutionalist" judges. He took to X, formerly Twitter, following a Politico report that analysts who have been critical of Trump regularly gather on Zoom calls for "off the record" discussions on the latest developments in the former president's myriad legal cases.

Mitch McConnell slams Trump for not wanting to close the border and blames Tucker Carlson for 'demonizing' Ukraine aid.
David Knowles

In what amounted to incredibly damning testimony, Pecker laid out the 2015 deal he reached with Trump “to help the campaign.” Pecker called the arrangement to publish stories to make Trump look good — and to smear his political rivals — “highly, highly confidential.” Trump’s then lawyer Michael Cohen fed the tabloid negative stories about rivals like Sen. Ted Cruz when they sensed him gaining momentum on Trump in the GOP primary, Pecker testified. Steve Bannon also pitched negative stories about Hillary Clinton to Pecker that the Enquirer published.

“Catch and kill”: Pecker also testified about the Enquirer’s efforts regarding “catch and kill,” the practice of buying the exclusive rights to a story only to make sure it would never be published. The Enquirer paid $30,000 to a Trump Tower doorman named Dino Sajudin for a story about Trump fathering an out-of-wedlock child. Though the story turned out not to be true, Pecker said, “I made the decision to buy the story because of the potential embarrassment it would have to the campaign and Mr. Trump.” A second catch-and-kill example involved former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who was shopping a story about a sexual relationship she said she had with Trump. “I think you should buy it,” Pecker said he told Trump, who was married at the time, during the 2016 campaign.
By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling

A former associate of Rudy Giuliani is still dishing out the dirt on the inner machinations of Donald Trump’s administration.

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman, helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian officials in his effort to “find dirt on the Bidens” that could potentially hurt then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s chances at taking the White House. That included connecting the Trump administration with an assortment of Ukrainian leaders, including the former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko.

Parnas dropped an eyebrow-raising story about Lutsenko Monday night, revealing how twisted international affairs became under the Trump administration.

“Lutsenko told me, ‘I’m the General Prosecutor of Ukraine, I want to meet A.G. Barr,’ so, I tell that to Rudy and he’s like, ‘Look, you want to meet Attorney General [Bill] Barr, the way things work here is you pay a lobbyist and they will get you in there, so you can pay me $200,000 and I will introduce you to Attorney General Bill Barr,’” Parnas told MediasTouch in a sprawling story about Giuliani’s meeting with the Ukrainian official.
David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc., described blocking scandalous stories about Trump even if they weren't true.
Bart Jansen | USA TODAY

Former National Enquirer boss David Pecker's testimony Tuesday at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial illustrated the prosecution’s argument that Trump participated in a conspiracy to kill unflattering news stories specifically to influence the 2016 election, rather than − as Trump's defense team has claimed − to spare his family embarrassment.

That intent on part is key to the prosecution's contention that hush money payments were part of an illegal campaign contribution.

Pecker, the former head of National Enquirer’s parent company, testified that the publication paid two sources to kill two scandalous stories about Trump before the 2016 election

In one case, Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc., said the supermarket tabloid paid $30,000 to silence a doorman at Trump Tower, Dino Sajudin, who was shopping a story alleging Trump fathered an illegitimate child – even though Pecker believed the story was false. Pecker called it potentially the biggest story "since the death of Elvis Presley."
Story by Nick Visser

Walt Nauta, one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in his classified documents case, was allegedly told he would receive a pardon even if he was charged with lying to the FBI, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The detail was revealed Monday in a redacted interview conducted with a witness in the federal case centered on Trump’s handling of classified files after he left the White House. Trump, Nauta and a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, have been charged with dozens of federal crimes in Florida, where the former president kept boxes of documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.

In an interview with the FBI, the witness — only identified as “Person 16” and someone who worked in the Trump White House — told investigators Nauta had been promised a pardon if the former president was reelected in November.

“NAUTA was told by FPOTUS’ people that his investigation was not going anywhere, that it was politically motivated and ‘much ado about nothing,’” a summary of the interview reads, using an acronym for “former president of the United States.”

“NAUTA was also told that even if he gets charged with lying to the FBI, FPOTUS will pardon him in 2024.”

Yale University History Professor Timothy Snyder joins MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart to discuss why pro-Putin propaganda is so prevalent in the Republican Party.
By Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell, CNN

CNN — The first criminal trial of Donald Trump is officially underway.

Prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys delivered opening statements and the first witness – a former National Enquirer publisher – was called Monday in the historic and unprecedented criminal trial of a former president.

Each side got their first chance to lay out a theory of the case for jurors. Prosecutors told jurors that the reimbursement of hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels was part of a larger conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election by hiding damaging information about Trump.

The former president’s attorneys responded by telling the jury that Trump was innocent and not involved in the creation of the 34 business records he’s charged with falsifying. They also pointedly added that there’s “nothing wrong with trying to influence an election.”

Trump continued to rail against the case as he entered and left the courtroom. On Tuesday, before the trial resumes, Judge Juan Merchan is holding a hearing on the district attorney’s motion to sanction Trump for violating the judge’s gag order barring discussion of witnesses.

Here are the key takeaways from Monday:
Story by Alex Bollinger

This past Friday, the Department of Education (DOE) unveiled new rules to protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination in schools under Title IX.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) responded to the news by posting pictures with a collection of bizarre and fringe anti-LGBTQ+ activists, who she referred to as “champions.”

“The Biden admin is changing the definition of ‘sex’ to mean gender identity taking effect Aug 1,” she incorrectly stated on X. She is referring to new Title IX rules announced by the DOE that ban discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. Title IX bans discrimination “on the basis of sex,” and several courts – including the U.S. Supreme Court – have already accepted the legal argument that such wording can include anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination because it’s impossible to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people without taking sex into account.

“This is the sign I keep outside my office in Cannon in DC,” she said, sharing a picture of a transphobic sign she put up in response to a Democrat flying a trans flag outside of her office over three years ago. “I’ve had it since 2021!”

“Whether it’s sex of [sic] gender, there are only TWO! MALE and FEMALE! A few champions who agree.”
Story by Sally Reed

Disinformation and controversy swirled as U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed an amendment to crucial aid for Ukraine that critics say aligns suspiciously with Russian talking points.

MTG Proposes Controversial Ukraine Amendment
Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned observers by proposing an amendment to strip funding from Ukraine unless the country lifts restrictions on the Hungarian minority's language rights.

The controversial amendment specifically cites the Hungarian population in Transcarpathia, a region in western Ukraine.

Criticism of Ukraine's Education Law
Hungarians make up 12.1% of Transcarpathia's population and have criticized Ukraine's 2017 education law requiring Ukrainian as the language of instruction in state schools.

Greene's amendment echoes the complaints of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has sought to expand his influence over ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary's borders.
Story by Bibhu Pattnaik

In a recent series of disclosures, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) offered a glimpse into the financial relationships between Elon Musk's various enterprises, revealing a complex web of transactions totaling $9.1 million.

These disclosures come as part of the preparation for Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in June. The regulatory filings detail payments between companies where Musk holds significant roles, including SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and The Boring Company.

Fortune reported that the exchanges notably include SpaceX paying Tesla $2.9 million in 2023 and through February 2024, and Tesla, in turn, paying an unnamed security company owned by Musk $2.9 million for his protection.

The people who constructed gallows on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have never been identified. CBS News obtained new video showing people moving pieces into place before dawn. Scott MacFarlane has more.
Story by Isabel van Brugen

A recent string of mysterious accidents at defense facilities in the U.S. and U.K. that have been producing weapons and equipment for Kyiv's forces in the war in Ukraine has fueled speculation on social media of possible Russian sabotage.

It comes amid rising tensions between Russia and the West, more than two years into Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian officials have regularly accused the United States of instigating a new world war in coordination with members of the NATO military alliance, while many, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, have warned that Moscow could be gearing up for a wider conflict with NATO.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

On Wednesday, two Russian nationals who were taken into custody by German police in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth were accused of preparing to bomb industrial and military sites in the country.

The federal prosecutor's office said Dieter S, 39, and Alexander J, 37, both German-Russian nationals, had been in contact with Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) and had plotted to carry out acts of sabotage with the intention of disrupting the supply of military aid to Ukraine.
Story by Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY

Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., accused his fellow Republican lawmaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of holding Congress "hostage" after she called to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Greene last month introduced what’s known as a “motion to vacate,” which, if passed, would boot Johnson from the speakership. The effort picked up steam this week after Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., announced he supports it, calling out Johnson shortly after he unveiled a plan to deliver foreign aid to U.S. allies.

But Greene's push drew condemnation from many Republican lawmakers, especially after the House was frozen for weeks after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted last year.  

Molinaro was asked during an interview with CNN on Wednesday about the consequences of Republican infighting, particularly for GOP lawmakers facing tough reelection battles.
By Jack Queen and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Lawyers in Donald Trump's historic criminal trial on Thursday selected 12 jurors who will assess his guilt or innocence over the coming weeks in a case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.

Lawyers for the defense and the prosecution still must select alternate jurors for the trial, the first ever in which a former U.S. president is the defendant.

Opening statements could take place on Monday, said Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the trial.

Earlier in the day, Merchan dismissed a juror who said she felt intimidated that some personal information was made public.

The judge also excused another juror after prosecutors said he may not have disclosed prior brushes with the law.
Story by Charles R. Davis

By the end of Tuesday, seven jurors had been selected to determine whether Donald Trump should be the first president ever convicted of a crime. By Thursday morning, when the Manhattan trial resumed, there were just six.

According to Judge Juan Merchan, the juror was excused after later expressing doubt that she could remain fair and impartial. In particular, she said that friends and family had already reached out to ask if she was serving on the jury.

Those calls came after numerous media outlets reported potentially identifying biographical information about the woman, including her job and the neighborhood she called home. Fox News Jesse Watters highlighted the juror's details while reading through public pool notes about the selected members. "This nurse scares me if I'm Trump," Watters said.
Story by David Badash

A sitting Republican Congressman is harshly criticizing far-right House Republicans over their apparent support of Russia.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it. I mean that’s a strange position to take,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a three-term Texas Republican rated a hard-core conservative told CNN’s Manu Raju, in video posted Thursday. “I think they want to be in the minority too. I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Congressman Crenshaw was referring to the movement led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), now joined by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), over the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to finally put legislation on the floor to provide funding to Ukraine to support that sovereign nation in its fight against Russia.

“I’m still trying to process all the b*llsh*t,” Crenshaw added.

Crenshaw on Thursday also commented on Speaker Johnson’s remarks, stating he will hold the Ukraine funding vote regardless of attempts to oust him over it.
Mark Alesia, Investigative Reporter

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is spreading the propaganda of American adversaries on social media, knowing those countries will amplify her messages for impact they wouldn’t otherwise have, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence.

In Monday’s debut of The Defiant Podcast with Brooklyn Dad Defiant, shared in advance with Raw Story, Frank Figliuzzi tells host Majid Padellan, “What we’ve caught Russia and China doing … is they’ll take a statement from Marjorie Taylor Green — or someone like her, someone who doesn’t deserve a particular amount of attention — and then those foreign intelligence services amplify it across social media.

“So she has immediate amplifying support out there. She knows when she spouts something ridiculous there’s going to be foreign adversaries who blow up her message so we can’t avoid it.”
Story by Matthew Impelli

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced criticism on Tuesday over comments he made during a case focused on the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

"In oral argument today, Justice Thomas is minimizing the severity of the 1/6 insurrection at the Capitol. Perhaps that's because his wife was part of the conspiracy. What a disgrace that he's sitting on this case," lawyer and former CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Thomas made comments on Tuesday as the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case relating to the Capitol riot following the 2020 presidential election with defendant, Joseph Fischer, arguing that the court should dismiss a charge against him of obstruction of an official proceeding.
His ‘Sleepy Joe’ nickname for his rival seems to have come full circle, with social media users now calling Mr Trump ‘Sleepy Don’
Kelly Rissman

While the rest of the world can’t peel their eyes away as Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial gets under way in New York, the former president himself appears to be far less enthralled by the proceedings.

Jury selection got under way on Monday in the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former president, as he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a bid to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

But, according to some courtroom reporters, Mr Trump appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open – and at one point may have even fallen asleep.

“Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported.

The observation quickly inspired a new nickname for the 77-year-old former president: “Sleepy Don.”
Donald Trump will spend most of this spring in a drab county courtroom, and he’s not happy about it.
By Kyle Cheney

Donald Trump is learning a hard lesson: Criminal defendants don’t get to set their own schedules.

Three times on Monday the former president asked Justice Juan Merchan to cut him loose from his hush money trial to attend to other matters — some personal, some political and some legal. Three times the judge responded with, essentially, “eh, we’ll see.”

Could he attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17? I’ll get back to you, Merchan said.

May he skip the trial on April 25 to attend Supreme Court arguments about whether he’s immune from special counsel Jack Smith’s charges for trying to subvert the 2020 election? Not likely, said Merchan.
MSNBC

NBC News Political Correspondent Vaughn Hillyard and New York Times Investigative Report Susanne Craig, and former Senator Claire McCaskill join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to Donald Trump’s comments after concluding Day 1 of his trial in the hush money case.
Sounds like Trump's lie

Story by Travis Gettys

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) grew up quite a bit wealthier than she has let on since entering politics, according to a new investigative report.

The New York Republican contrasted herself against her Democratic rival in 2014 as a scrappy underdog running against a "multimillionaire," but The Daily Beast found that the Harvard graduate came from a much more comfortable background than she has let on.

"If Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from, she seems to have forgotten — to the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaign — how her family’s wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26," wrote William Bredderman and Jake Lahut for the website.
Story by Molly Sprayregen

Columnist Nicole Russell held nothing back in a searing op-ed for USA Today condemning the GOP for its unconditional support of Donald Trump.

The former president is currently facing dozens of indictments, and right now, all eyes are on New York, where his criminal trial regarding alleged hush money he paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels begins today.

The case will determine whether Trump is guilty of providing said hush money to Daniels in an effort to hide disparaging information about him while he ran for president in 2016. Daniels claims she and Trump had an affair, and Trump denies it. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 a few days before the election, which prosecutors claim Trump then reimbursed through the Trump Organization with payments logged as legal services.

Russell wrote that “as a former Trump fan who has turned” she understands the temptation to “think that this case isn’t airtight or, on the scale of crimes, that it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.”
Story by Ed Mazza

Donald Trump’s attempt to explain the Battle of Gettysburg took some strange verbal detours ― and his critics were quick to call him out over it.  

“Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg,” the former president said at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “What an unbelievable, I mean it was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways.”
Baila Eve Zisman

Ben Rhodes, the former Deputy National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama, has raised concerns about Jared Kushner’s alleged corruption in his $3 billion investment fund, predominantly financed by foreign sources.

Kushner’s firm received a $2 billion investment from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund shortly after he departed from the White House, serving as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, Donald Trump.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, Rhodes expressed his unease, “This is just putting a price tag on American foreign policy… This is a level of corruption that we’ve just never seen, and it’s hiding in plain sight.”
Story by Toni Aguilar Rosenthal

More than 8 million people die from air pollution and fine particulate matter globally every year, according to the BMJ, a peer reviewed medical journal. Of that number, over 5.13 million people die from ambient air pollution resulting from fossil fuels use. Experts say that deaths from air pollution are also on the rise, and are currently expected to double by 2050. In the U.S. alone “350,000 may die annually from pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels.” According to the American Lung Association (ALA) more than one-fourth of Americans live with “air pollution that can hurt their health and shorten their lives.” Of course, risk and exposure are themselves not borne equally; cities in the western U.S., along with communities of color, disproportionately bear the brunt of air pollution’s public health harms.

These numbers would likely be much higher if not for the Clean Air Act (CAA), which has proven both enormously popular and successful in saving hundreds of thousands of lives since its passage in 1970. In 2020 alone, the CAA was projected to prevent 230,000 premature deaths in the US, according to the EPA.

Republican Attorneys General, and their industry backers, want to gut it.
MSNBC

For a candidate described as a liberal by Trump-supporters at Fox News, Robert Kennedy Jr.'s policy positions are remarkably aligned with the right. And key members of his campaign staff are strikingly anti-Biden and pro-Trump, leading many to question the real goal of the RFK Jr. campaign as Donald Trump's allies are reportedly trying to use his candidacy to their advantage. Senator Tim Kaine discusses with Alex Wagner.

Jury selection in former President Donald Trump's New York hush money trial begins on Monday, while today in Florida there are pre-trial hearings in Trump's classified documents case. Lisa Rubin, former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Catherine Christian, and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman join Peter Alexander to weigh with the latest in the trials of the former president.
Story by Zac Anderson, USA TODAY

Sarah Matthews was working in the White House on Jan. 6, 2021 when a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. She saw how Trump’s staff tried to get him to condemn the violence for hours without success.

“In my eyes, it was a complete dereliction of duty that he did not uphold his oath of office," Matthews told USA TODAY. "I lost all faith in him that day,”

Matthews resigned from her job as deputy press secretary in the wake of Jan. 6. She views Trump as a threat to democracy who tried to steal the 2020 election and would do it again.

Matthews is part of a large group of former Trump administration officials who have been sharply disapproving of the former president as he seeks to return to the Oval Office. Many who are questioning his fitness for the presidency held high-level positions in the White House, including former Vice President Mike Pence and multiple cabinet members.
Story by SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — A deadly traffic stop where plainclothes Chicago police officers fired nearly 100 shots in under a minute has raised serious questions about the use of force and role of tactical officers in departments.

As family and community members mourn 26-year-old Dexter Reed, a police oversight agency and Cook County prosecutors are investigating.

Here’s a deeper look:

‘GRAVE CONCERNS’
Videos and documents released this week by the Chicago Office of Police Accountability paint a harrowing picture of what happened during the March 21 traffic stop.

But about a week ago, the oversight agency’s leader expressed “grave concerns” about the officers’ actions in a letter to Police Superintendent Larry Snelling.
Story by Michelle L. Price

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has called him a “threat to democracy.” Former national security adviser John Bolton has declared him “unfit to be president.” And former Vice President Mike Pence has declined to endorse him, citing “profound differences.”

As Donald Trump seeks the presidency for a third time, he is being vigorously opposed by a vocal contingent of former officials who are stridently warning against his return to power and offering dire predictions for the country and the rule of law if his campaign succeeds.

It’s a striking chorus of detractors, one without precedent in the modern era, coming from those who witnessed firsthand his conduct in office and the turmoil that followed.

Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee and is among those warning about the threat he poses, said it’s “mind-boggling” how many members of his senior staff have denounced him.
New information shows that the insurance company that swooped in and bailed out Trump with a $175 million bond isn’t on a list of vetted companies—and wrote a bizarre contract.
Jose Pagliery

The little-known insurance company that rescued Donald Trump by providing a last-minute $175 million bank fraud bond isn’t just unlicensed in New York; it hasn’t even been vetted by a voluntary state entity that would verify it meets minimum “eligibility standards” to prove financial stability.

Perhaps even more troubling, the legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn’t actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee, according to three legal and bond experts who reviewed the contract for The Daily Beast.

“This is not common… the only reason this would be done is to limit the liability to the surety,” said N. Alex Hanley, an expert in how companies appeal enormous judgments.
Story by Nick Mordowanec

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday said that Russia is "protecting Christianity" more than Ukraine, as part of what she described as a broader war against the religion.

Greene, the two-term GOP lawmaker out of Georgia, has been one of the more outspoken members of her party's conference over not providing continuous domestic aid to Ukraine in its two-plus year conflict with Russia since it was invaded on February 24, 2022.

A strong supporter of wanting Congress to devote funding towards the southern border and against illegal immigration, Greene has also vocally attacked Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. She has introduced a motion to vacate against him after he pushed through a $1.2 trillion spending bill that avoided a partial shutdown. While using rhetoric pegging the Speaker as a Democrat, Greene has also publicly questioned Johnson's Christian faith on multiple occasions.
So sad

Story by Nikki McCann Ramirez

It's eclipse day in America, and if you thought Fox News was going to act normal about it, you were wrong.

The right-wing news network wasted no time on Monday attempting to link the moon's brief blotting out of the sun to migrant crossings at the Mexico border.

"Fox News alert! A rare celestial event collides with a policy failure on the ground. The southern border is directly in the path of totality today when the moon covers the sun," host Dana Perino said during Monday's broadcast of America's Newsroom.

Co-host Bill Hemmer chimed in, adding, "We're told officials are bracing for higher traffic than usual. That means a real opportunity for smugglers and cartels and migrants to come right in."
Story by insider@insider.com (Brett Alder)

A lot of people, including myself, move from California to Austin because of the hype and the perception that California and Austin are reasonably comparable in lifestyle. My family and I found that to be far from the case.

Here's what we learned, or 10 reasons that Austin is not the "California of Texas." But first, what does Austin have in common with California?

Austin, like California, is not affordable.
The thing that California and Austin definitely have in common is that they're both very expensive. Austin is not cheap. Let the words sink in. Austin is not cheap; it's actually quite expensive.

We moved from San Diego in 2015 (owning a 2,000-square-foot house on a one-third acre) looking for a boost in lifestyle. If you're looking for great schools, the southwest and northwest sectors of Austin are the main options. The only caveat is that NW Austin (Travis County) is some of the most expensive real estate in Texas.
Rachel Leingang

Excerpts from his speeches do not do justice to Trump’s smorgasbord of vendettas, non sequiturs and comparisons to famous people

Donald Trump’s speeches on the 2024 campaign trail so far have been focused on a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly menacing tone.

He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.
Story by Aaron Blake

During the first impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in 2019, former Trump national security aide Fiona Hill made an extraordinary plea. Seated in front of congressional Republicans, she implored them not to spread Russian propaganda.

“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” she told them. She was referring to comments they had made during her earlier deposition breathing life into a baseless, Trump-backed suggestion that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

“These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” she added.

Republicans on the committee blanched at the suggestion that they had served as conduits for Russian misinformation, but Hill refused to back down.
Story by Ed Mazza

Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday spotted a head-spinning moment on Fox News in which one of the network’s commentators made a bizarre claim about Donald Trump’s push to sell $59.99 Bibles.

“President Trump selling a Bible is kind of a regular guy thing to be doing,” Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce said with a straight face. “This is what Trump does. It takes him into people’s kitchens, into their living rooms, while the left is sitting up on the highest mountain in the world looking down on all of the hoi polloi.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/stephen-colbert-gives-trump-crystal-clear-reminder-of-all-his-biggest-failures/ar-BB1kZhxK?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=75b25f80f5bc4a19e0f153e00a8a081b&ei=40
Stephen Colbert Gives Trump Crystal Clear Reminder Of All His Biggest Failures
Story by Ed Mazza

Stephen Colbert on Tuesday hit Donald Trump with a blunt reminder of some of his biggest business disasters, along with one very personal one.

“The Late Show” host noted that shares in Trump’s Truth Social website plunged this week, causing the company to lose some $4 billion in value.
Story by Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA TODAY

The White House said on Thursday it may change its policy on Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza unless Israel can outline "concrete" steps to reduce harm to civilians and protect aid workers.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, three days after Israel launched an attack in Gaza in which seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed, the White House said.

"President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable," according to a statement from the White House. "He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers."

Biden made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by U.S assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps, according to the statement released by the White House.
Story by Alexander Fabino

As Governor Greg Abbott lauds Texas for surpassing the national economic growth rate, as measured by the state's gross domestic product, the Lone Star State faces a surge in job losses, primarily in the retail and manufacturing sectors.

Texas saw an unexpected increase of 2,274 initial jobless claims for the week ending March 23, according to data published by the Department of Labor on April 4, casting a shadow over the state's economic celebrations.

In a broader context, the national landscape mirrors Texas' labor-market challenges. Total initial jobless claims across the U.S. have risen to 221,000, the new data showed, marking an increase from the previous week's 210,000 and exceeding analysts' expectations of 212,000.

Texas' new unemployment numbers arrived days after Abbott touted the state's economic resilience and expansion, highlighted by a 5 percent annual growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Story by Ed Mazza

President Joe Biden’s campaign team slammed Donald Trump for his open embrace of violence with a supercut video reminding voters of just how explicit the former president has been over the years.

The minute-long video from Biden’s campaign team shows Trump calling for violence against protesters at his rallies, calling white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, “very fine people,” and telling the neo-fascist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

The supercut also shows him urging supporters to “fight like hell” on Jan. 6, 2021, just before some of those in the crowd near the White House marched to the U.S. Capitol to attack Congress at it met to certify the electoral vote that gave the presidency to Joe Biden:
MSNBC

Republican strategist Karl Rove tore into former President Trump this week over Trump saying he would pardon January 6 rioters.
MSNBC

Donald Trump is leaning into the events of Jan. 6 as he campaigns for 2024. In this segment, see MSNBC’s Ari Melber’s interview with Bush vet Karl Rove, who condemns Jan. 6 felons.

Donald Trump's Truth Social has made its Wall Street debut. Now its valuation wildly fluctuates. In exclusive reporting today from The Guardian, we learned that the company was allegedly, "kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans in part, from a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation."
Story by Amanda Marcotte

When I saw the news that the stock price of Truth Social went into freefall after the company initally went public for $8 billion, I immediately sent a joke to a friend text circle: "Whoever allowed the contract to keep Trump from dumping the stock until 6 months post-sale is gonna be covered in ketchup." Shortly after it was released, the company's stock soared to $70 a share, initially meaning Trump, on paper at least, had netted $3 billion in wealth. But Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, told CNN he was "confident the stock price will eventually drop to $2 a share and could even go below that," because Truth Social's business model is not conducive to profit.

"The large mismatch between stock price and stock value will sorely tempt the cash-poor Trump to sell off a significant portion of his shares, in a potential maneuver that I believe I am the first to label 'Trump and dump,'" Timothy Noah of the New Republic joked. "Pump and dump is an unethical practice where influential figures talk up a stock they own a lot of shares in, artificially inflating the value, and then sell it off for a major profit before the rubes realize they bought a lemon. Because Trump is contractually obliged not to sell his shares yet, he's watching the value slide downhill before he can cash in, while other hustlers openly brag to Reuters they used the blind loyalty of Trump fans to pull off the pump-and-dump.
By Richard Winton

In one of the largest cash heists in Los Angeles history, thieves made off with as much as $30 million in an Easter Sunday burglary at a San Fernando Valley money storage facility, an L.A. police official revealed Wednesday.

The burglary occurred Sunday night at an unnamed facility in Sylmar where cash from businesses across the region is handled and stored, according to L.A. Police Department Cmdr. Elaine Morales.

The burglars were able to breach the building as well as the safe where the money was stored, Morales said. Law enforcement sources said the break-in was among the largest burglaries in city history when it comes to cash, and the total surpassed any armored-car heist in the city as well.
Story by Allison Quinn

An Oklahoma official who marched alongside neo-Nazis at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was voted out of office in a recall election late Tuesday.

Judd Blevins, who had been fighting to keep his seat on Enid’s six-member City Council, lost by 268 votes to his challenger, Cheryl Patterson, according to results from the Oklahoma State Election Board.
Story by Philip Bump

As the 2020 election approached, President Donald Trump had two problematic groups of supporters that he didn’t want to alienate. One was the Proud Boys, an extremist group that had already earned a reputation for engaging in violence against opponents. The other was more loosely knit: adherents of the QAnon movement.

QAnon was problematic for very different reasons. While there had been crimes linked to the movement (including at least one killing), the political challenge was primarily that the most fervent supporters held views that were somewhere between bizarre and deranged. There’s an international cabal of prominent people in entertainment and the Democratic Party that worships Satan and traffics children to ingest a chemical they produce? Got it.

Those views sat at the extreme, certainly. But even more anodyne manifestations of QAnonism were dubious, centered on an anonymous figure, Q, who allegedly worked in the Trump administration and was helping the president combat the evil deeds of his enemies. Q began posting cryptic messages online a few months into Trump’s presidency, with tens of thousands of people subsequently parsing them for hidden meaning.
Opinion by Heather Digby Parton

Donald Trump, an alleged "master brander," has liberally stolen all of his most famous slogans from other politicians, starting with "Make America Great Again" which he took from Ronald Reagan. During the 2016 campaign, he made a big announcement that he was going to be the "Law and Order" candidate, which made many people chuckle since it evoked the famous TV show. But it was also one of Richard Nixon's winning slogans in 1968, used to appeal to the white conservatives who were freaking out over civil rights and anti-war protests.

I've never been sure if Trump is consciously aware of the political echoes of these thefts or if he really believes he came up with them himself. Either way, they resonated with Republicans who either nostalgically recalled their former leaders using those terms or think Trump is a very stable genius for creating such instantly memorable campaign slogans.

From the moment he came down the escalator in 2015, Trump's been demonizing undocumented immigrants as murderers and rapists and promising to eliminate the problem with draconian crackdowns. He loves to regale his crowds with lurid, detailed accounts of violent crimes allegedly committed by undocumented migrants and goes to great lengths to present such isolated incidents as evidence of an unprecedented crime spree. In Michigan on Tuesday, he proclaimed that they have "wrecked our country" and said that even though some people think it's wrong to call them "animals" he was going to continue to do it because "they're not humans."
By Graham Kates

A New York judge barred former President Donald Trump Monday from making public comments about the judge's family.

The order by Judge Juan Merchan came after prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked Merchan to expand a previously issued gag order in the case, "making clear that the court's family is off-limits."

Merchan ultimately decided that the comments about his daughter would "undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself."

"The average observer must now, after hearing Defendant's recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but their loved ones," Merchan wrote. "Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself."
by Bill Press, opinion contributor

Whoever said it first, the words of advice usually attributed to Dale Carnegie have been around since the 1940s: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” And nobody’s practicing that more today than Donald Trump.

He complains about being slammed with so many lawsuits and denounces them as part of a “witch hunt,” but Trump is actually taking full advantage of his trials. He is turning every court appearance into an opportunity to speak to the media — even though he seldom says anything new, and sometimes what he says makes no sense at all.

Outside a New York courtroom last week, for example, Trump somberly declared: “We can’t have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”   

After which gobbledygook, most reporters just shook their heads as if to say “There he goes again, talking pure gibberish. But that’s just Trump being Trump.”
by Tara Suter

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) on Monday signed a law recriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs.

The law makes personal use possession a misdemeanor punishable with sentences of up to six months in jail. However, it also creates avenues for treatment instead of criminal penalties by encouraging law enforcement agencies to start programs that would move defendants toward addiction and mental health services.

Kotek said in a signing letter that “deep coordination” between courts, police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and local mental health providers is vital, adding that they are “necessary partners to achieve the vision for this legislation.”
Story by Hafsa Khalil - BBC News

Atemporary alternative route for ships is to be opened in the US city of Baltimore following the collapse of a major bridge, officials have announced.

Six people died after the Dali cargo ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge last Tuesday, causing shipments to be suspended in and out of one of the country's busiest ports.

Meanwhile, efforts are under way to remove debris from the water.

A 200-tonne piece of the bridge was removed on Sunday.

Those involved in the clean-up have been cutting debris from the bridge into smaller pieces that can be removed and taken to a disposal site.

Cranes have been erected on the site to help lift debris from the bridge. That includes the Chesapeake 1000, the largest crane on the eastern US seaboard.
By Dakin Andone and Dianne Gallagher, CNN

CNN — Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh received another prison sentence on Monday, this time in federal court, where a judge sentenced him to 40 years after he pleaded guilty last year to nearly two dozen charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering.

The federal sentence – which includes an order Murdaugh pay more than $8.7 million in restitution to his victims – will run concurrently with the 27 years he’s already serving following his guilty plea in state court to similar crimes.
The killings of Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan transfixed America, particularly when rumours of an apocalyptic cult began to surface. Their mother Lori Vallow was jailed for life last year.
Michael Drummond

An alleged leader of a "doomsday" cult is to go on trial today charged with murdering his wife's two children in a killing that transfixed America.

Sci-fi author Chad Daybell is rumoured to have gathered followers through his Mormon-inspired books about the apocalypse - including his wife Lori Vallow.

He is accused of murdering two of Vallow's children - Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7, and his sister Tylee Ryan, 16 - as well as his ex-wife Tammy.

The killings of the children sparked a months-long search and gripped news audiences across the US. If convicted in the trial, which is expected to start on Monday, Daybell could face the death penalty.
by Miranda Nazzaro

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.) on Sunday said “families should always be off-limits” after former President Trump lashed out at the daughter of the Manhattan judge overseeing his hush money trial

When asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if Trump’s recent attacks against the judge, the judge’s daughter and President Biden crossed a line, Lawler said, “Look, I think, obviously, the former president has every right to defend himself in court. He has every right to defend himself as — through the proper legal channels.”

“I think everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric, the language. And, obviously, social media has become a vehicle by which to bludgeon people,” he added. “I just think, at the end of the day, the former president, current president, and on down, all of us have a responsibility to check our language, to watch what we’re saying, and to focus on the issues at hand.”
By Jessica Albert , Rohan Mattu , Adam Thompson  

BALTIMORE -- Paths are being cleared to get ships past the mangled wreckage at the Key Bridge collapse site to the Port of Baltimore.

U.S. Coast Guard Captain David O'Connell, the federal on-scene coordinator for the Unified Response to the bridge collapse, said  in an exclusive interview with CBS News two auxiliary channels are planned to open Monday: one along the northeast section of the channel, and one running along the south.

The north side would accommodate boats requiring 10 feet of water or less to operate, while the south side would accommodate boats requiring up to 14 feet. There's pre-existing debris along the south side of the channel the Coast Guard is working to remove.

"We're working with salvage to pull that out of the water tomorrow," O'Connell said.  

The two temporary channels will mainly be for response vessels, commercially essential vehicles and those participating in salvage efforts.
The Metro Nashville Police Department announced that they were searching for a convicted felon in connection to Sunday's shooting.
Sarah Al-Arshani, Keith Sharon, Kelly Puente, USA TODAY NETWORK

One person was killed and seven others were injured after a shooting at a Nashville coffee shop on Easter.

Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said two men got into an argument during Sunday brunch at Roasted in the Salemtown neighborhood, and one pulled out a gun, the Tennessean part of the USA TODAY Network reported.

First responders received calls about the shooting at around 3 p.m. The suspected gunman fled in a Mercedes GLS 450 after firing multiple shots.

On Sunday evening, MNPD announced that they were searching for Anton Rucker, 46, in connection to the shooting. Police said Rucker was a convicted felon with previous aggravated assault convictions. He had also previously been arrested on felony drug charges and gun charges, MNPD said, in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
By Robert Shackelford and Tina Burnside, CNN

CNN — A wide-ranging storm system is moving across the country, bringing the threat of severe storms, flooding and snow across parts of the Central and Eastern US, from Texas to Virginia.

The potential for damaging weather ramps up on Monday, with over 50 million people under some threat of severe storms in states including Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Here’s how the threats will play out over the next few days.
Back to content