The Donald Trump era has cost the District of Columbia thousands of jobs, blown a billion-dollar hole in its budget and caused a downgrade of the city’s AAA bond rating.
Now Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin, is coming for the capital’s weed, too — and threatening to upend a tacit agreement where federal prosecutors have respected Washington’s local marijuana laws.
The opening salvo came via a letter from Martin to a D.C. medical-marijuana vendor. “Your dispensary appears to be operating in violation of federal law,” he wrote, “and the Department of Justice has the authority to enforce federal law even when such activities may be permitted” by local laws. So much for the store’s legal license.
It’s a turn of events that ought to petrify anyone who thinks Washington’s deep-blue local electorate should be free to choose permissive blue-state rules.
But it’s very on-brand for Martin. A longtime anti-abortion activist who previously represented Jan. 6 defendants, he’s been at the center of constant culture-war controversies ever since Trump made him D.C.’s top federal prosecutor in January.
Tag Archives: President Donald Trump
Light Wave Reports: Trump Slammed With More Bad News in Impeachment Poll
A new poll from Data for Progress indicates that a majority of American voters support a third impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Conducted between April 18 and 21, the survey found that 52% of respondents favored impeaching Trump, reflecting a sharp partisan divide.
Throw the bum out!!!!!
WCCO Radio Minneapolis: Possible Trump executive order could target sanctuary cities. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says it’s not the city’s problem
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says President Donald Trump is wrong and told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News says that it would be against Minnesota state law, and is also a violation of a separation ordinance between the city and the federal government.
“Look, I’m the mayor of this city and my responsibility is to make sure that people are safe and I want our officers, I want them stopping violent crime,” Frey explains. “I don’t want our officers spending a single second assisting someone who’s undocumented, and that’s the only issue.”
Mayor Frey says that the Minneapolis police department has more important things to do and adding immigration enforcement duties would be unsafe for the city.
“I’ll just ask kind of the, the basic question like what’s more dangerous? A serial killer who’s on the loose or a guy that’s just dropping his kids off at school and then going to work a landscaping job? There are more important things that we need our officers to do and we’re able to prioritize that,” Frey said.
MSNBC: Trump’s treasury secretary accidentally summed up the bitter truth about his tariffs
Amid his verbal squirming in Tuesday’s news conference, Bessent offered a perhaps unintended revelation. “President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past,” the secretary said. “We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back.”
But textiles and other low-cost goods that rely on cheap foreign labor are subject to Trump’s tariffs, which means higher prices for consumers even if Americans won’t ever make those products again. And while precision manufacturing is great, it tends to be much more automated, which requires a smaller number of highly skilled employees. That means Americans won’t be working in that kind of factory by the tens of millions.
In other words, Bessent accidentally summed up the effects of Trump’s tariffs: we’ll pay higher prices, but get little in return. Even before we feel the worst of it, Americans already understand. They aren’t happy and, if a recession comes, Trump will really feel their wrath.
Associated Press: NYPD shared a Palestinian protester’s info with ICE. Now it’s evidence in her deportation case
New York City’s police department provided federal immigration authorities with an internal record about a Palestinian woman who they arrested at a protest, which the Trump administration is now using as evidence in its bid to deport her, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The report — shared by the NYPD in March — includes a summary of information in the department’s files about Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who was arrested at a protest outside Columbia University last spring. It lists her home address, date of birth and an officer’s two-sentence account of the arrest.
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It remains unclear how immigration authorities were able to learn about Kordia’s presence at the protest near Columbia last April. At the demonstration, police cited Kordia with disorderly conduct. But the charge was dismissed weeks later and the case sealed.
City law generally prohibits police from sharing information about arrests with federal immigration officials, although there are exceptions for criminal investigations.
On March 14, an NYPD officer generated a four-page report on Kordia and shared it with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Washington Examiner: Maine settles with Trump administration in funding freeze lawsuit
The State of Maine dropped its lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday after reaching a settlement agreement, which comes as the two parties have been feuding over transgender policies.
Maine agreed to withdraw its lawsuit in exchange for the Department of Agriculture vowing not to freeze the millions of dollars it directs to the state’s Department of Education unlawfully, according to court documents.
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Judge John Woodcock, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, previously ruled in Maine’s favor by granting a restraining order. He said the USDA’s actions were “contrary to law, for multiple reasons,” including because Secretary Brooke Rollins did not follow legal procedures required to stop the funding.
Rollins agreed on Friday to “refrain from freezing, terminating, or otherwise interfering with the state of Maine’s access” to USDA funds, “based on alleged violations of Title IX without first following all legally required procedures,” the agreement read.
More here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/02/trump-maine-funding-freeze
The Hill: Opinion: Trump is tanking with Ohio independents — a new poll shows why
Trump won Ohio by 11 points in 2024. But the news among Ohio independents today is not especially good.
According to the latest Bowling Green State University-YouGov poll of 800 registered Ohio voters, Trump is underwater among independents. Just 40 percent approve, while 47 percent disapprove of his job performance. Just five months ago, 56 percent of Ohio independents reported voting for Trump.
Potential trouble among independent voters is apparent throughout the survey. More than half of Ohio independents (53 percent) think the country is on the wrong track, with nearly half (48 percent) saying that inflation or the economy in general is America’s most important problem and another 13 percent saying threats to democracy.
Asked about their personal economic situation, more than half of Ohio independents (52 percent) believe it has worsened. Their assessment of the U.S. economy is more dire. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) believe it has gotten worse.
Asked about the Trump administration’s tariff policies, more than half of Ohio independents (51 percent) believe they hurt the U.S., and 53 percent believe they will hurt them personally. Specifically asked about a 25 percent tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, 61 percent of Ohio independents are opposed.
Wall Street Journal: Trump Officials Explore Ways of Challenging Tax-Exempt Status of Nonprofits
Trump administration officials are exploring ways of challenging the tax-exempt status of nonprofits, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that some IRS staffers fear could damage the agency’s apolitical approach.
In hourslong meetings that continued over a recent weekend, Internal Revenue Service lawyers explored whether they could alter the rules governing how nonprofit groups can be denied tax-exempt status, the people said.
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Another senior IRS official, Gary Shapley, separately said in at least one meeting that he’s giving priority to investigating the tax-exempt status of a select group of nonprofit organizations, according to people familiar with his remarks. Shapley made the comments as deputy head of the criminal investigations unit. Shapley, who is also an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, didn’t name any specific groups, the people said.
Some current and former IRS officials fear that the deliberations appear to depart from longstanding practice at the IRS. They come as Trump has said his administration will strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status and suggested the administration could target other organizations.
Trump officials outside the IRS have also had ongoing conversations about how to potentially target nonprofits’ tax-exempt status and endowments for months, an administration official said.
The Atlantic: Don’t Look at Stock Markets. Look at the Ports.
Stock markets plunged for days after President Donald Trump announced steep tariffs on imports from around the world. The sell-off ebbed only when he suspended most, but not all, of the new measures for 90 days. The ticker tape is just one indicator of an economy, and other signs are growing more and more ominous—including at the Port of Los Angeles, where high tariffs on China are crushing maritime traffic. “Essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased,” Eugene Seroka, the executive director of the port, said on April 24.
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The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest containerized-cargo port in the Western Hemisphere, processes about 17 percent of everything the United States imports or exports in shipping containers. The adjoining Port of Long Beach accounts for another 14 percent. Over the years, a whole ecosystem has arisen to support the loading and unloading of the cars, clothes, electronic gadgets, and other things that people want. There are workers and warehouses, trucks and loading pads, security structures and rail lines.
Seroka estimated that cargo arrivals would soon be down 35 percent over the same time last year. At the moment, the drop in traffic seems likelier to accelerate than to reverse. The number of cargo ships canceling port calls or entire voyages is on the rise. A number of shipments now under way were instigated before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariff announcement, on April 2. According to Forto, a cargo-management and -tracking company, reservations for shipping products must normally be placed two weeks before a cargo vessel launches. The trip from China from California typically takes two or more additional weeks. In other words, the full effects of U.S. tariff policies on maritime traffic may not be apparent for some time.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/don-t-look-at-stock-markets-look-at-the-ports/ar-AA1E6eR8
NBC News: Trump administration asks Supreme Court to grant DOGE access to Social Security data
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to pause a lower court’s order restricting affiliates of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive Social Security Administration data, arguing in a Friday filing that the judicial order limits President Donald Trump’s executive authority.
“This emergency application presents a now-familiar theme,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “A district court has issued sweeping injunctive relief without legal authority to do so, in ways that inflict ongoing, irreparable harm on urgent federal priorities and stymie the Executive Branch’s functions.”
Sauer urged the court to lift an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander blocking DOGE from accessing the data, which includes Social Security numbers, medical records and tax and banking information.