Tag Archives: Matthew Chapman

Raw Story: Trump all but confirms plot to meddle in major [New York City] election

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump all but confirmed his well-reported plot to interfere in the New York City mayoral race on Thursday evening, reported Politico’s Emily Ngo.

Asked by reporters whether he is working on making a candidate withdraw from the race, Trump said, “No, I don’t like to see a communist become mayor. I won’t tell you that. And I don’t think you can win, unless you have one on one.” His remarks appeared to reference Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a young Muslim with ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, and his main challenger, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani earlier this year but is still running in the general election under a separate ballot line.

“I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one on one,” Trump continued. “And I think that’s a race.”

This follows reporting that Trump is considering extending an offer of a position in his administration to incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running far behind either Mamdani or Cuomo, to make him end his campaign. It also comes after Adams reportedly met with a Trump adviser in Miami, despite his public denials that he is considering any such offer.

Also potentially in contention for a job offer to exit the race is the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Mamdani since his victory in the race, calling him a “Communist Lunatic” and even suggesting at one point that he would use his executive power to somehow overturn the election result.

Trump all but confirms plot to meddle in major [New York City] election

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-mamdani

Raw Story: DOJ’s shock move lets Trump stack immigration courts with handpicked lawyers

Posted on by
Reply

The Justice Department plans to scrap longstanding rules and qualifications for immigration judges and create a new policy where it can appoint any lawyer it wants to temporarily preside over cases, reported Government Executive on Wednesday.

“The change gives Attorney General Pam Bondi wide latitude in selecting officials to oversee asylum and other cases pending before the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the nation’s immigration courts,” said the report. “That authority could provide President Trump with additional power to withhold legal status from immigrants and expedite his mass deportation efforts.”

Immigration judges are different from typical so-called “Article III” judges, like the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and district courts, who are constitutional officers appointed for life; they are instead “Article I” judges who were authorized by Congress to serve at the pleasure of the presidential administration and hear narrow types of subject matter issues.

“Since 2014, the department has allowed only former immigration judges, administrative law judges from other agencies or Justice attorneys with at least 10 years of experience related to immigration law to serve as temporary immigration judges, or TIJs,” said the report. “In its update, to be issued Thursday as a final rule, EOIR called those parameters overly restrictive, noting it has hired fewer than a dozen temporary judges since the Obama administration put them into place.”

The shortage of immigration judges available to hear cases has been a contentious issue for years, and was part of the reason for the massive backlog of cases for the surge of migrants in the years prior to the Trump administration.

A bipartisan immigration deal cut in the final years of the Biden administration would have established more funding for immigration courts to operate on an expedited basis; however, Trump worked behind the scenes to tank the deal among Republican lawmakers.

This makes a mockery of justice under administrative judges. All administrative judges should be removed from Department of Justice and placed under the supervision of the circuit / district courts.

DOJ’s shock move lets Trump stack immigration courts with handpicked lawyers

https://www.rawstory.com/doj-judges

Raw Story: ‘Please reconsider’: GOP senators plead with Trump to stand down from latest fight

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump’s ploy to bully Senate Republicans into dropping a longstanding rule about presidential nominations appears to have crashed and burned, Politico reported on Tuesday — with lawmakers holding their ground against him in a way they generally dare not do.

The drama began in July, when Trump lashed out at 91-year-old Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA), calling him “weak and ineffective” and demanding he axe “blue slips,” the tradition that committees must have the approval of a nominee’s home state senators to advance a nominee.

Republicans already weakened blue slip rules for circuit court nominees in 2017, which is how Trump’s former personal lawyer Emil Bove got a circuit court appointment earlier this year despite objections from both of New Jersey’s senators. But they have been adamantly against eliminating them for district court judges or executive nominations.

Grassley pushed back, taking umbrage at Trump’s “personal insults” against him, and the broader Senate GOP caucus followed suit. According to Politico, there’s no sign of the GOP backing down — they may tinker with nomination rules to speed up confirmations on the Senate floor, but they won’t eliminate blue slips or weaken the committee vetting process.

Unlike in many other cases of resistance against Trump, where GOP lawmakers have given quotes anonymously, some senators are being quite open in rebuffing the president, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) telling Politico, “As a practical matter, the Senate’s not going to give up the blue slip. So my appeal to the president is: please reconsider. Why do we want to have this fight for nothing?”

There’s a key reason GOP senators don’t want to undermine their rules for Trump’s benefit here, strategists told Politico: they know it would backfire on them.

Mike Fragoso, a former adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “argued that even Republicans wary of crossing the president now have taken advantage of the blue slip policy when Democrats held power. He added that there are relatively few bench seats in solidly Democratic states that Trump could even fill now without consent from Democrats,” noted the report. This means Trump would get very few judges nominated by totally eliminating blue slips, but a future Democratic president could flood red states with district court judges of their own.

Beyond judges, however, Trump is being stymied by blue slips when it comes to appointing federal prosecutors.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has blocked Jay Clayton’s confirmation to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, while New Jersey’s senators have blocked another personal Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, for the prosecutor office there, prompting a standoff where Trump’s Justice Department has skirted rules and reversed decisions of local judges to install her on an acting basis.

‘Please reconsider’: GOP senators plead with Trump to stand down from latest fight

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-grassley-2673900010

Raw Story: Trump crackdown hits legal wall with new ruling

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest legal blow to the Trump administration, a federal judge in Rhode Island has prohibited officials from setting new restrictions on grants issued by the Violence Against Women Act based on Trump’s executive order purging the federal government of “gender ideology.”

VAWA distributes federal funding to communities to prevent domestic violence. Trump began moving to scale back some of these funds, which in 2022 were passed to support shelters that serve some particularly high-risk groups of women. Under Trump’s policy, any jurisdiction that seeks VAWA grants would have to commit against supporting transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

U.S. Senior District Judge William E. Smith’s order blocked this policy while litigation proceeds, finding that the Trump administration is likely to be in violation of federal law — and went into detail about how Trump’s policies risk a chilling effect on victims of domestic and sexual violence from receiving support.

“Many of the Coalitions that provide services to eligible victims who are transgender question whether they will now be permitted to provide the same quality of services, including acts such as: (1) providing trainings on servicing transgender and nonbinary crime victims, and (2) using those victims’ preferred pronouns, in basic recognition of those victims’ gender identity, because doing so would run afoul of the so-called ‘gender ideology’ Executive Order,” wrote Smith.

Furthermore, he wrote, they fear “they will no longer be permitted to discuss with victims options for responding to incidents of domestic or sexual violence other than reaching out to law enforcement, which in some jurisdictions can involve collateral consequences that might not be the preferred course for particular victims, because doing so would arguably violate the challenged condition regarding collaboration with law enforcement.”

This verdict comes just days before the Aug. 12 deadline for communities to file VAWA grants for the year.

Trump crackdown hits legal wall with new ruling

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-judge-2673870689

Raw Story: Kids can be deported over their tattoos under Trump’s megabill: expert

Posted on by
Reply

An expert with the libertarian Cato Institute sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to slash taxes on the wealthy and cut over $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps, and green energy subsidies, highlighting a lesser-known provision that could codify one of the president’s most controversial deportation policies — and turbocharge it into overdrive.

Specifically, posting on X, David J. Bier pointed to a subsection on page 529 of the bill that deals with the increase in funding for immigration enforcement.

“In the case of an unaccompanied alien child who has attained 12 years of age and is encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the funds made available under subsection (a) shall only be used to conduct an examination of such unaccompanied alien child for gang-related tattoos and other gang-related markings,” said the section.

In other words, wrote Bier, “You’ve heard about how ICE deported a bunch of adults to a Salvadoran torture prison based on their tattoos. Did you know that the Big Beautiful Police State Act includes $40 million to identify ‘gang kids’ the same way?”

Kids can be deported over their tattoos under Trump’s megabill: expert

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-bill-2672527082

Raw Story: Ex-prosecutor demands full probe after ‘heart attack’ death in ICE custody

Posted on by
Reply

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wants an immediate and full congressional investigation into the latest death of a detainee in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration.

The detainee, a 75-year-old Cuban national named Isidro Perez, was reported to Congress by ICE officials, with news on the incident saying that “the death appears to have been caused by a heart attack.”

That explanation didn’t suffice for Vance.

“‘Appears’ is doing a lot of heavy, lifting here given what we know about how other detainees, including a woman who lost her baby in ICE detention have experienced,” wrote Vance. “Especially with ICE trying to prevent Congress from oversight, there should be a full investigation into this.”

Ex-prosecutor demands full probe after ‘heart attack’ death in ICE custody

https://www.rawstory.com/ice-2672503459

Raw Story: ‘Not going to pass’: Another MAGA senator turns on megabill over GOP provision

Posted on by
Reply

A prominent pro-Trump senator is coming out against one of the more controversial provisions proposed for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Punchbowl News congressional reporter Max Cohen that the plan by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to sell off portions of federally-owned land to build housing is a dead letter as far as he is concerned.

“I oppose it. The way it’s written right now, it’s not going to pass,” he said.

‘Not going to pass’: Another MAGA senator turns on megabill over GOP provision

https://www.rawstory.com/steve-daines-2672419783

Raw Story: ‘Is he confused?’ Gavin Newsom schools Trump on what his troops actually do

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump complained Wednesday that California can’t be trusted with forest fire management — and then Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) reminded him that the people in charge of that were called away on Trump’s orders.

Trump made the comments in response to questions about whether the standoff between himself and Newsom over mass deportations could affect federal wildfire relief for the state.

“Sure, maybe,” said Trump. “The man’s incompetent. You clean the floor of your forest, and you won’t have any forest fires.”

“Clean the floor of the forest”? LOL! Should he wash the forest windows, too?

The president has made similar comments many times, at one point during his first term drawing widespread mockery and a rebuke from the Finnish government for claiming California needs to “rake” its forests to stop fires, like they supposedly do in Finland.

…

“You pulled National Guard from my command — who were literally doing this work — to stand around in front of a building in LA,” wrote Newsom. “Does the President of the United States not understand what his troops do? Is he confused again? Deeply disturbing.”

‘Is he confused?’ Gavin Newsom schools Trump on what his troops actually do

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-newsom-2672396890

Raw Story: ‘Lightning fast’: House lawmakers get a stern directive from Trump

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday to demand that the House immediately act on a new package of cryptocurrency laws passed by the Senate.

“The Senate just passed an incredible Bill that is going to make America the UNDISPUTED Leader in Digital Assets — Nobody will do it better, it is pure GENIUS!” wrote Trump. “Digital Assets are the future, and our Nation is going to own it. We are talking about MASSIVE Investment, and Big Innovation. The House will hopefully move LIGHTNING FAST, and pass a ‘clean’ GENIUS Act.”

“Get it to my desk, ASAP — NO DELAYS, NO ADD ONS,” Trump added. “This is American Brilliance at its best, and we are going to show the World how to WIN with Digital Assets like never before!”

The GENIUS Act is the first legislation aimed at regulating so-called stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency intended to remain stable in price as opposed to typical coins that can fluctuate wildly in value.

However, its passage in the Senate was fraught, as Democrats initially blocked the bill over a variety of concerns, including a lack of consumer protections, the potential domination of the space by tech companies, and the fact that the bill had a loophole that could be exploited by the Trump family to continue profiting off crypto ventures personally, a massive potential conflict of interest.

“A loophole that could be exploited by the Trump family”? A loophole for our Grifter-in-Chief? I’m shocked! Not!

Critics of the bill still fear it would be a giveaway to Trump ….

The king wants his due!

‘Lightning fast’: House lawmakers get a stern directive from Trump

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-genius-act

Raw Story: Trump rebuked as judge bars re-arrest of another student activist

Posted on by
Reply

A federal judge has once again handed President Donald Trump a loss in the administration’s efforts to deport international student activist Mohammed Hoque.

According to Politico legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein, Judge Jerry Blackwell of the District of Minnesota granted Hoque’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, preventing him from being re-detained.

Hoque, a Bangladeshi national studying at Minnesota State University-Mankato involved in pro-Palestine activism, was arrested earlier this year, allegedly over the revocation of his visa. Authorities reportedly followed him home from class and arrested him in front of his family.

Blackwell ordered his release last month after the federal government failed to prove it had a political reason for locking him up and terminating his Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVIS, status.

In issuing the habeas grant, Blackwell further slammed the Trump administration for targeting Hoque over First Amendment-protected political activity.

“The record separately establishes that Petitioner’s SEVIS termination violates DHS policies. The first is a policy against targeting protected speech,” wrote Blackwell. “The second is a policy that visa revocation does not justify SEVIS termination … Not only does agency policy preclude the practice, it contravenes federal law.”

Trump rebuked as judge bars re-arrest of another student activist
A federal judge has once again handed President Donald Trump a loss in the administration’s efforts to deport international student activist Mohammed Hoque.According to Politico legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein, Judge Jerry Blackwell of the District of Minnesota granted Hoque’s petition for a wr…

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-deportation-2672387306