News

Summary

The Trump Store released $50 “Trump 2028” hats Thursday, sparking backlash online as Trump has repeatedly hinted at running for a third term.

“I have had more people ask me to have a third term,” Trump said on March 31, claiming the 2020 election was “totally rigged.”

Steve Bannon said he's exploring “five or six different alternatives” to enable a third run.

Critics on social media called it “insane” and a sign of “fascist” ambitions. Though barred by the 22nd Amendment, Trump could run again if it were overturned by Congress and the states. However, it would require a two-thirds vote of Congress and three-fourths vote of the states.

Ryan Hemphill, who remains jailed after his arrest last month, pleaded not guilty to a 116-count indictment charging him with predatory sexual assault and other crimes dating to last October. The 43-year-old, who is also a lawyer, threatened to have victims arrested or disappeared in a bid to keep them silent, prosecutors said.

“The defendant told these survivors that he was untouchable,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “The indictment makes clear that he was wrong.”

Hemphill’s apartment, near the Empire State Building, was outfitted with numerous surveillance cameras, and investigators have recovered images showing dozens, if not hundreds, of other women, many of them naked and blindfolded, Curzer said.

Investigators also found hundreds of bullets and high-capacity magazines, and a large amount of drugs, including heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and fentanyl, prosecutors said.

Elon Musk raced to build Colossus, the world's largest supercomputer, in Memphis, Tennessee. He bragged that construction only took 122 days and expected that his biggest AI rivals would struggle to catch up.

Now xAI is facing calls to shut down gas turbines that power the supercomputer, as Memphis residents in historically Black communities—which have long suffered from industrial pollution causing poor air quality and decreasing life expectancy—allege that xAI has been secretly running more turbines than the local government knows, without permits.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested April 25 by federal authorities who are investigating whether she tried to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom last week, officials confirmed.

Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse and is in federal custody.

FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X about the arrest.

"Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction — after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week," Patel wrote. "We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest."

Officials have not yet identified the defendant whom she is accused of assisting, but it appears to be Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant facing three misdemeanor battery counts. He was in Dugan's courtroom on April 18 for a scheduling hearing.

Sources have told the Journal Sentinel that ICE officials arrived in Dugan's courtroom on the morning of April 18. When they went to the chief judge's office, Dugan directed the defendant and his attorney to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.

Last week's arrest marked at least the third time in recent months that federal immigration agents have come to the courthouse with arrest warrants. In March and early April, two people were arrested by ICE officials in the hallways of the courthouse.

The court appearance comes about a week after a federal grand jury indicted Mangione on four federal charges in the December 4 killing of the insurance executive.

https://archive.ph/n8mQl

More than 21,000 people died in local jails and state prisons in four years, according to records the government has hidden from public view since 2021.

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> Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty Friday to a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as prosecutors formally declared their intent to seek the death penalty against him.

> Late Thursday night, federal prosecutors filed a required notice of their intent to seek the death penalty.

> That came weeks after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she would be directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for what she called “an act of political violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”

> Mangione’s federal indictment includes a charge of murder through use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The indictment, which mirrors a criminal complaint brought after Mangione’s arrest also charges him with stalking and a gun offense.

Taking a page from authoritarians around the world, Trump is targeting his political opposition with criminal investigations.

Donald Trump issued a memorandum on Thursday ordering the Department of Justice to investigate online political fundraising platforms with the intent of targeting Democratic Party fundraising platform ActBlue.

The memorandum specifically mentions ActBlue while using broader language in ordering an investigation into “online fundraising platforms.”

This is the latest in a series of targeted attacks by Trump against his perceived enemies, including law firms, nonprofits and former government officials. This, however, is the first time that he has taken aim at a part of the machinery of the Democratic Party. It is the clearest effort yet by Trump to use the power of the presidency to destabilize and hobble his political opposition. This follows his actions to eliminate or delegitimize all civil society entities that oppose, or could, oppose him.

Following GPS to the nearest Costco led a Guatemalan woman and her two U.S. born children to the International bridge where they were detained for a week and now face deportation.

> The FBI on Friday arrested a Wisconsin county judge accused of helping a man avoid immigration enforcement, Director Kash Patel said.

> Patel made the announcement in a post on X and said his office believes Judge Hannah Dugan “intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse.”

...

> The arrest marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s fight with the judiciary over the White House’s sweeping immigration enforcement policies. The Justice Department had previously signaled that it was going to crack down on local officials thwarting federal immigration efforts.

> The department in January ordered federal prosecutors to investigate state or local officials who they believe are interfering with the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250425111951/https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-youtube-ads-mexico-migration/

On Tuesday night, Claire Ponder Selib, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), received an email from the Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice (DOJ) that left her devastated.

The message informed her that a federal grant that supported a pilot program to train victim advocates who staff domestic violence shelters, hotlines and rape crisis centers was being cut. The program, called the Victim Advocacy Corps, began in 2022 and selected 15 students from six colleges and universities that serve minority populations to take part in a year-long, paid fellowship at local organizations, including campus-based sexual assault programs, domestic violence agencies and family justice centers. The DOJ notice claimed the grant “no longer effectuates Department priorities,” which it said were focused on “more directly supporting certain law enforcement operations” and “combatting violent crime.”

The pilot program also aimed to solve turnover among advocates caused by low pay and an uptick in domestic violence that experts attribute to the pandemic and new abortion restrictions. “I would say quite frankly that our workforce is in crisis,” Selib said. “Our goal with this program was to create a pipeline for the new generation of victim advocates.” Selib had hoped the program would eventually expand nationwide.

"I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland's policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks," Bondi wrote in an internal memo obtained by Axios.

Bondi's announcement comes as several federal agencies have been beset by constant — and often embarrassing — leaks.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250425111705/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-blocks-trump-bid-halt-federal-funding-sanctuary-cities-rcna202828

President Trump, whose trade war with China has rattled financial markets and threatened to disrupt huge swaths of trade, suggested on Friday that he has been in touch with Xi Jinping, China’s president, even as officials in China insist that no negotiations are occurring.

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Giuffre died by suicide Friday at her farm in Western Australia, her publicist confirmed.

The Trump administration on Friday abruptly moved to restore thousands of international students’ ability to study in the United States legally, but immigration officials insisted they could still try to terminate that legal status despite a wave of legal challenges.

The decision, revealed during a court hearing in Washington, was a dramatic shift by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as the administration characterized it as only a temporary reprieve.

The back and forth only contributed to the anxiety and confusion facing international students as the administration has moved to cancel more than 1,500 student visas in recent weeks.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250425112355/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-upends-dojs-civil-rights-division-sparking-bloodbath-senior-rank-rcna202622

Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo’s announcement on the Senate floor Thursday that he’s changing his registration to no party affiliation is the latest blow to a party that has struggled to define itself after a series of crushing electoral losses in recent years.

Pizzo called modern partisanship “a mess” and said “constituents are craving practical leaders, not political hacks.”

Once the country’s premier swing state, Florida’s presidential elections used to be decided by the narrowest of margins. But the state has increasingly slipped out of Democrats’ grasp, and the GOP has made significant in-roads in formerly Democratic strongholds like Miami-Dade County. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by more than 1.2 million voters.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250424015326/https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-the-fight-to-return-the-other-men-trump-sent-to-cecot

The National Abortion Federation (NAF) this week released their Violence and Disruption Report for 2023 and 2024, documenting widespread antiabortion terrorism against abortion clinics.

The report revealed that there were 1,199 violent incidents at abortion clinics in 2023 and 2024. The report also documented extensive disruption of services. (The actual number of incidents of harassment and violence targeting abortion providers is likely much higher than NAF’s reported numbers.)

Summary

Tesla reported its worst quarterly results in four years, with Q1 income down 71% and EV sales falling 13%.

Elon Musk vowed to refocus on Tesla amid backlash over his political role in the Trump Administration’s DOGE program, but analysts doubt his return will fix worsening issues.

Tesla faces eroding market share, failed products like the Cybertruck, and a coming 145% tariff on imported Chinese battery cells set to hammer the company’s battery pack business, one of the only bright spots last quarter.

Musk’s pivot to robotaxis and humanoid robots lacks credibility, and critics say Tesla has no compelling new EVs to revive growth.

>A plane transporting the man took off on April 15 from an airport in the state capital Harrisburg about a half hour after U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines issued an order temporarily blocking the administration from moving him out of her western Pennsylvania judicial district or the country, Justice Department lawyer Laura Irwin told an April 17 hearing, conducted as a conference call. > >... > >The administration has not been accused of violating the order by Haines, appointed by Trump during his first presidential term, by sending the man to Texas. But his transfer demonstrates the administration's aggressive tactics willingness to defy a supposedly coequal branch of government to try to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants it accuses of being members of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua even as various courts including the Supreme Court impose restrictions. > >Representatives of the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. > >Details about the transfer of A.S.R. were revealed in three court filings by his lawyers and a transcript of the April 17 hearing, all previously unreported. > >He was believed to be among dozens of Venezuelans at the Bluebonnet facility who the Trump administration had tried to deport last week under a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act that historically has been used only in wartime, the ACLU said. > >That deportation effort was blocked by an emergency ruling by the Supreme Court last Saturday.

Archived at https://archive.is/zw6N1

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, facing criticism of his stewardship at the Pentagon and beset by staff turnover, added a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to his circle of close advisers.

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