President Donald Trump's executive order demanding states put new procedures in place for mail-in voting and turn over information about who is voting by mail is almost certain to be struck down in court, Jim Saksa wrote for Democracy Docket on Friday — but that's not the only way it could derail Trump's ambitions.

That's because this order could also undermine one of the main arguments Trump's Justice Department has used in court to defend the lawsuits filed against dozens of states to seize their voting rolls.

"In those lawsuits, the DOJ has claimed it needs millions of voters’ private sensitive data in order to ensure the states are complying with federal laws that require states to take steps to ensure accurate rolls," said the report. "But outside of court, DOJ officials like Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon have undermined that claim by boasting that the state voter records they’ve already obtained have been used to verify citizenship status using the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program."

After judges began ruling against the lawsuits on these grounds, DOJ officials backpedaled somewhat and said there was no plan to help the Department of Homeland Security build a national database of voters.

Trump, however, may have blown that excuse by outright acknowledging in his executive order that he "directs DHS to create a nationwide voter registration database," noted the report.

"Along with Dhillon’s statements and Trump’s orders, the DOJ’s courtroom attestations have been impeached repeatedly," wrote Saksa. For example, "last week, CBS reported that DOJ and DHS were working to formalize a data-sharing agreement for the voter rolls. And on the same day Tucker was assuring a federal judge that the DOJ wouldn’t share state records with DHS, Eric Neff, acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section, admitted to another judge in Rhode Island that they, in fact, would."

Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, but as it turns out, she wasn’t the only highly controversial figure to exit Main Justice this week. NBC News reported:

Jared Wise, a former Jan. 6 defendant who was later employed by the Trump administration, resigned today from the Justice Department, where he was working with the ‘weaponization working group.’

‘I returned to Washington to fully expose the abuses by the FBI and DOJ against J6 defendants, but it became clear that this will only happen from outside of government. So I left and will do so,’ he wrote on X.

If there were a competition for the most controversial hire of the Trump administration’s second term, Wise would be a top contender.

Last summer, the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group” (itself an absurdity) hired Wise, a former FBI agent. Though his name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, he was a ridiculous choice for a position in the DOJ for an important reason: Wise was a Jan. 6 rioter accused of encouraging the insurrectionist mob to kill police officers.....

The administration didn’t deny any of this. The Justice Department was unembarrassed about its hiring of an insurrectionist captured on video urging rioters to kill cops. In fact, a DOJ spokesperson conceded Wise’s role and described him as “a valued member” of the team.

This week, however, Wise decided to step down, which is notable in its own right, though I’m struck by his description of the circumstances. He didn’t resign because Justice Department officials no longer wanted to be associated with him; Wise resigned because he no longer wanted to be associated with them.

I don’t know when the Justice Department’s reputation will recover, but it won’t be anytime soon.

The Pentagon has invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel. Except it’s only for Protestants, not Catholics.

“Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel,” reads a Friday email sent by Air Force leadership, a copy of which was shared by an employee.

“I guess so the Catholics know their kind ain’t welcome,” said this employee, who requested anonymity to speak about internal communications. “It’s so ridiculous.”

A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed it is not hosting another, separate religious service for Catholic employees.

“The Protestant service is the only service scheduled in the Pentagon chapel today,” they said in a statement....

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a far-right evangelical Christian, has tried to infuse his religious views into Pentagon activities.

There is, however, another potential avenue for accountability: a series of civil lawsuits filed against Trump. The president and his lawyers have long insisted that he should be immune from the suits, but a federal judge came to a very different conclusion. Roll Call reported:

President Donald Trump must still face civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for his role in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in a long-running litigation from Democratic House members and Capitol Police officers.

Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in an opinion found that a range of actions Trump took leading up to the attack did not qualify for the legal immunity presidents have for official acts.

The judge ruled there are some official acts from Jan. 6 for which he cannot be held liable in civil cases, but the president’s remarks at the Ellipse, shortly before the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, are fair game — because, as Mehta concluded, they can “plausibly” be seen as remarks that incited violence.

This was clearly not the outcome Trump was hoping for. By the same token, this was excellent news for those who filed the cases against the president, including police officers who were injured during the violence on Jan. 6. Among the civil lawsuits:

In March 2021, two Capitol Police officers, James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, sued Trump, claiming he was liable for the injuries they suffered during the riot.

In August 2021, seven more police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot sued the former president.

In January 2022, three more police officers, including two who aided the evacuation of lawmakers, sued Trump, seeking damages for their physical and emotional injuries.

In January 2023, the longtime partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after Jan. 6, filed a wrongful death civil suit against Trump.

The cases were ultimately consolidated.

Time will tell what becomes of the litigation as the process advances, but if the plaintiffs ultimately succeed, the cases have the potential to be politically embarrassing and financially costly for the president. They won’t have the impact of a criminal trial, but let’s not forget that Trump has suffered several major legal setbacks and defeats in recent years — the E. Jean Carroll case, the Trump Organization’s fraud case, the demise of his fraudulent charity, the demise of his fraudulent “university,” et al. — and those were all civil cases.

It did not take long for the pictures to come off the wall.

Within hours of the news that President Donald Trump had fired Pam Bondi as attorney general, images began circulating of her framed portrait, unceremoniously removed from its place of honor near the president and vice president on the walls of Justice Department offices.

One photo obtained by MS NOW showed Bondi’s portrait in a trash bin.


...What Bondi did not discuss publicly was the respected veteran she demoted over the incident: Devin DeBacker. He had been the acting chief of the national security division.

“They better take her picture down,” one former national security division official, who is among several still disturbed by Bondi’s removal of DeBacker, told MS NOW.

Nearly all of the senior career officials in the Biden DOJ served loyally and ably during Trump’s first term, without incident.

Now it’s Bondi who has been shown the door, and many DOJ veterans are quietly celebrating.

Bondi could not be reached for comment.

Yes, the April jobs report released Friday showed that the U.S. added 178,000 jobs last month, well above expectations. But over the last six months, job growth has averaged just 89,000 per month – weak sauce by any measure. As usual during Trump 2.0, the health care industry led the way with 76,000 jobs added (thanks in part to the resolution of a strike at Kaiser Permanente). Other industries lagged: while manufacturing employment grew 12,000, there are still 82,000 fewer such jobs than when Trump returned to the White House, And a large part of the reason the overall unemployment rate fell to 4.3% is because 400,000 people exited the workforce entirely.
?resize=560,695

Overall, the job market is all but frozen, with little in the way of hiring or turnover. And for recent college graduates, it’s even worse, which might help explain Trump’s faltering support among this cohort. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than 40 percent of college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 hold jobs that typically don’t require a college degree. That high a share is usually seen only during economic downturns and their immediate aftermath, and is comparable to rates seen in the aftermath of the Great Recession.....

Economists are increasingly predicting stagflation – a period of low growth and high inflation – for the U.S. No surprise, consumer sentiment is all but in the toilet, with the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey at near-record lows and huge numbers of Americans say they believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.....

At the same time, the extreme corruption of the Trump administration is also giving companies a license to raise prices and otherwise treat their customers like chumps without a choice. The gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has left Americans with nowhere to turn when a credit card issuer or bank does them wrong. The de facto refusal to enforce antitrust statutes will almost certainly raise costs for Americans as well.

As I’ve pointed out before, Trump’s economy in many ways resembles to a multi-level marketing scheme. The only people making out here are the wealthiest of the wealthy, who are benefitting from tax cuts, while Trump performs his lifelong serial con bait and switch on the rest of us. This month’s job numbers are almost certainly offering more of the same – they look good on first glance, but dig beneath the surface, and the rot quickly becomes apparent.

It was a pointed reminder that Hegseth is not exactly open to engaging with military officials whose views differ from his own. On the contrary, he’s proved himself eager to purge the armed forces of those he deems unworthy — a campaign that’s ongoing. MS NOW reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, removing the Army’s top officer in the latest shake-up of military leadership amid the war in Iran.

Hegseth asked George to step down and retire immediately, a Department of Defense official confirmed Thursday to MS NOW. Christopher LaNeve, a former Hegseth military aide, is expected to serve as acting chief of staff. CBS was the first to report the ousting. The Pentagon confirmed George’s departure Thursday in a social media post, without further detail.

George was not exactly a controversial figure. When the Senate confirmed the highly decorated general and combat veteran in 2023, the vote was 96-1.

Hegseth pushed him out anyway and then kept going. MS NOW confirmed that two other Army generals were fired alongside George: Gen. David Hodne, the head of Army Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the 26th chief of chaplains......

About a year ago, five former defense secretaries, including retired Gen. Jim Mattis, Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, condemned the pattern of firings as “reckless.” Their joint letter, addressed to Congress, asked the House and Senate to hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications” of the dismissals. Hegseth and the administration appear to have ignored those concerns; the purge is still going on; and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have scheduled no such hearings.

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who served as a Marine officer in Iraq and now serves on the House Armed Services Committee, spoke to Politico about Hegseth’s purges, which the congressman described as politically motivated.

“That’s a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,” Moulton said. “That’s the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea.”

The Massachusetts Democrat made those comments last May. The problem is far worse now.

Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 59,000 new jobs being created in the United States in March. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals exceeded those expectations. CNBC reported:

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 178,000 during the month, a reversal from the 133,000 decline in February and better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 59,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. February’s number was revised down by 41,000 while January was revised up by 34,000 to 160,000, putting the three-month average around 68,000.

With job creation higher, the unemployment rate edged lower to 4.3%.

It’s worth emphasizing for context that a major nursing strike in California and Hawaii depressed payrolls in February by tens of thousands of jobs, and now that those labor disputes have been resolved, those now count as new jobs in March. Still, 178,000 is a good overall number.....

To contextualize the data, MS NOW put together this chart showing month-to-month totals since the 2020 election. The blue columns point to Biden’s presidency, while the red columns point to Trump’s.

?resize=560,695

It remains to be seen whether the president responds to the trend by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (again).

If you’ve never heard of Hasan Piker — the wildly popular gaming livestreamer, influencer and far-left political commentator with more than three million followers on Twitch, nearly two million on YouTube, more than two million on Instagram and over a million followers on X — you’re got plenty of company.

More than half of Democratic voters have no idea who he is. Yet over the past week, Piker has become the latest flashpoint in Democratic politics, with some moderate Democrats condemning him, while progressive Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed plans to hit the campaign trail with him next week.

Piker, a charismatic online personality, also had a dark side: a voluminous history of making antisemitic, misogynistic and downright offensive and inappropriate statements on his YouTube channel. Though his audience is massive, why any Democrat, progressive or moderate wants to be linked to him is baffling. For Democrats intent on winning back the House and Senate — and running against a historically unpopular incumbent president this November — Piker is a political distraction and potential liability.

Piker, who self-describes as a Marxist, infamously declared in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.” He has repeatedly called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” compared Zionism to Nazism and said “Hamas is a thousand times better” than Israel.”.....

And it’s not as if Piker is a great friend to the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly criticized Democrats, particularly for their ideological moderation and ties to corporate interests. He didn’t endorse Kamala Harris in 2024 or Joe Biden in 2020, offering at best tepid support. (Though the Harris campaign did invite him to livestream from the 2024 Democratic National Convention as part of its “Creators for Kamala” initiative.) Piker is a leftist, not a Democrat......

But 55% of Democrats have never heard of Piker, and of those who have, only 13% view him favorably.....

Indeed, if the paragon of liberal politics — and the person who can attract young voters — is a guy who regularly makes antisemitic statements, blames America for 9/11 and can’t even endorse a Democratic presidential standard-bearer, perhaps the problem is not Piker’s critics, but rather those who feel they must defend him. Put aside the suspect morality of supporting someone with this kind of rhetorical track record — and the message sent to American Jews, who have long been one of the most dependable voting blocs for Democrats — how does anyone see Piker as a political asset for Democrats?

For all the voters Piker could potentially attract to the candidates he supports, there are almost certainly more who would be repelled by him. If liberal Democrats were smart, the less voters heard about Piker between now and November, the better.

WASHINGTON — Usually, when a Supreme Court session starts, all eyes in the courtroom are on the mahogany bench behind which the justices sit.

Not this time.

Abuzz with word that President Donald Trump would become the first sitting president known to have attended a Supreme Court oral argument, reporters and others in the courtroom were craning their necks in the opposite direction.,,,,

What makes Trump different is the invective he has aimed at the very justices whom he wants to win over. After the tariffs loss, he referred to those who voted against him — including Roberts and two other conservative justices — as a "disgrace to our nation" and "very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution."

Before the justices entered the courtroom on Wednesday, some lawyers who had been scheduled weeks ago to be sworn in as members of the Supreme Court bar expressed surprise that the president would be in attendance for what they considered their special moment......

Soon after Cecillia Wang — the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer leading the challenge to his executive order — began her argument, Trump abruptly stood and left the courtroom to attend an Easter lunch at the White House.

His snap verdict was quickly delivered on Truth Social: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 'Birthright' Citizenship!”

While Trump, as his past actions have suggested, may have intended to influence the justices, there was little sign that he would. Several conservative justices, including those he appointed, appeared to be unswayed by Sauer's argument.