MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell details how “Donald Trump wants you to believe he was the only close friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s who did not contribute to his birthday book” as Donald Trump dehumanized the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein when he said he hadn’t thought about meeting with them.
Workers stayed on a roof in Rochester as agents left with slashed tires following a four-hour ICE standoff.
A group of Democratic senators is filing a friend of the court brief Tuesday in California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump, stepping up pressure to keep Trump from overriding Democratic leaders and sending National Guard troops into Democrat-led cities like Chicago.
The 19 senators are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to overturn a temporary order issued by a three-judge panel in June that found that Trump had the authority to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles this summer over Newsom’s objections. The Democratic senators argue that the issue has gained greater salience since then, as Trump began threatening to go into other states and cities against the wishes of their governors and mayors.
The senators are amplifying Newsom’s argument that the president’s use of the federal troops — at a moment when local law enforcement officials said they did not need federal support — violated the separation of powers doctrine by usurping Congress.
A federal district court judge initially sided with Newsom on June 12. Then, on June 19, the three-judge panel issued their temporary ruling siding with Trump. California is waiting on a final ruling from the appeals court.
Led by California Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, the group includes senators who represent Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Portland — all cities that Trump has threatened to send in National Guard troops to “straighten it out” as he ramps up enforcement on crime and immigration. Schiff said in a statement that he hoped the Newsom case would become “the line drawn in the sand to prevent further misuse of our service members on the streets of American cities.”
The senators argue in their brief that by federalizing 4,000 California National Guard troops for domestic law enforcement over Newsom’s objections “without showing a genuine inability to enforce federal laws with the regular forces,” Trump violated the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering mandate and contravened the provisions of the Constitution assigning power over militias to Congress.
“Our concern that President Trump will continue to act in bad faith and abuse his power is borne out by his recent deployment of state militias to Washington, D.C. and his stated intent to deploy state militias elsewhere (like Chicago and Baltimore),” the senators wrote in the brief obtained by The Washington Post that will be filed in court Tuesday. They warned that courts are the last resort to “prevent the President from exceeding his constitutional powers” and that failing to do so could “usher in an era of unprecedented, dangerous executive power.”
In court filings this summer, the administration argued that Trump was compelled to send the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property because numerous “incidents of violence and disorder” posed unacceptable safety risks to personnel who were “supporting the faithful execution of federal immigration laws.” Department of Justice lawyers argued that Trump was within his rights to mobilize the National Guard and Marines “to protect federal agents and property from violent mobs that state and local authorities cannot or choose not to control.”
Before Trump sent National Guard troops into Los Angeles this summer in the midst of protests against his administration’s immigration raids, prior presidents had deployed Guard troops on American soil primarily to assist after natural disasters or to quell unrest.
The senators write that the last instance in which a president federalized the National Guard without consent from the state’s governor is when Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol to prevent the Rev. Martin Luther King, Rep. John Lewis and others from marching from Selma to Montgomery. President Lyndon B. Johnson intervened to protect the marchers.
Our arguments to the court make clear that Trump’s unprecedented militarization of Los Angeles should not be used as a playbook for terrorizing other cities across America,” Padilla said in a statement.
Last month, the president deployed National Guard troops and federal agents to D.C., arguing that they needed to tackle a “crime emergency” that local officials say does not exist. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a Democrat, last week sued the Trump administration, seeking to force it to withdraw troops from the city.
In recent days, Trump has escalated his warnings to intervene in Chicago, posting on his social media site that the city is “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” a reference to the Defense Department.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said on social media Monday that Trump’s threats were not “about fighting crime,” which would require “support and coordination” from the administration that he had not yet seen.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it had launched an operation to target immigrants in Chicago as the president vowed a broader crackdown on violent crime. A spokesperson for Pritzker said Monday that the governor’s office has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration or information about its plans.
A new Trump administration report condemned the Biden administration for its treatment of Christians.
The initial report of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias has been released, and it categorized what it called “numerous instances of anti-Christian bias during the Biden administration.”
“Joe Biden weaponized the full weight of the federal government against Christians and trampled on their fundamental First Amendment rights,” White House representative Taylor Rogers said, according to Fox News.
“Unlike Joe Biden, President Trump is protecting Christians, not punishing them,” Rogers said.
The report said that in recent years, America’s Christian underpinnings have been “undermined. The political, social, and humanitarian contributions of Christians have been devalued, their beliefs marginalized, and their communities unlawfully targeted by their own government.”
“A review of federal departments and agencies revealed a consistent and systematic pattern of discrimination against Christians during the Biden Administration. Where there should have been ‘equal justice under law’ there was unequal treatment — policies and practices that singled out Christian people, Christian houses of worship, and Christian convictions for disfavored treatment,” the report said.
The report included the task force’s vow that “the federal government will never again be permitted to turn its power against people of faith.”
“Under President Trump and Attorney General Bondi’s leadership, in partnership with all members of this Task Force, the rule of law will be enforced with vigor, and every religion will be treated with equality in both policy and action. The days of anti-Christian bias in the federal government are over. Faith is not a liability in America — it is a liberty,” the report said.
The report cited various departments that imposed prejudicial actions against Christians.
For example, it said, the Department of State “provided limited humanitarian relief to Christians relative to other populations and offered muted responses to attacks on Christians compared to other groups.”
In the State Department, “preferential employment practices were afforded adherents of non-Christian religions, while Christian employees were disfavored. It was particularly concerning that employees were less likely to be permitted leave for observation of certain Christian holidays as opposed to non-Christian ones.”
It also “imposed radical LGBTQ gender ideology on foreign governments and State employees, including the forced usage of preferred pronouns and rainbow flags, violating the sincerely held religious beliefs of many Christians and other Americans of faith.”
The Department of Justice “arrested and convicted approximately two dozen individuals under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities. Yet, the same DOJ refused to apply the FACE Act to protect places of worship and crisis pregnancy centers,” per the report.
Over at the Department of Education, “The Biden Administration’s ‘book ban coordinator’ role within ED, investigated school boards for removing age-inappropriate materials from school libraries, typically in response to religious objections by parents.”
“Though these investigations remain in their early stages, the evidence uncovered is unmistakable: during the Biden Administration, people of faith, particularly Christians, were repeatedly subjected to anti-religious bias at the hands of their own government,” the report’s conclusion noted.
“By eradicating anti-Christian bias in the federal government, the Task Force is reaffirming a principle older than the Republic itself, that freedom of religion is not granted by government but guaranteed against it.
“America must remain One Nation Under God if she is to remain Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All. The Task Force will never permit the federal government to be used as a weapon against faith.”
