Donald Trump is incensed after the New York judge in his hush-money trial refused to toss the entire case, per his request.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan on Monday ruled that Trump’s guilty conviction, based on 34 felony counts, will stand, regardless of what the Supreme Court has said about immunity. And that didn’t sit well with Trump, who spent the next day venting angrily on his personal posting platform, Truth Social.
“BREAKING: In a completely illegal, psychotic order, the deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, and incompetent Acting Justice Juan Merchan has completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” Trump ranted.
“But even without Immunity, this illegitimate case is nothing but a Rigged Hoax. Merchan, who is a radical partisan, wrote an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it. Merchan has so little respect for the Constitution that he is keeping in place an illegal gag order on me, your President and President-Elect, just so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts….”
Merchan on Monday ruled that Trump’s hush-money conviction cannot be dismissed on the grounds of immunity because the actions he was found guilty of—falsifying business records regarding hush-money payments he made during his 2016 campaign to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair—were part of his personal, not presidential, life.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision made it so that former presidents are protected from prosecution for official acts. But Trump’s actions took place well before he was even elected.
“I am the only Political Opponent in American History not allowed to defend myself - A despicable First Amendment Violation! … It is time to end the Lawfare once and for all, so we can come together as one Nation and, Make America Great Again,” Trump wrote.
Indiana Representative Victoria Spartz has announced she will be stepping away from the “circuses” of doing what she was elected to do—governing—so that she could join forces with a fake advisory group that wants to dismantle the government.
Spartz pledged her services Monday to the Department of Government Efficiency, led by technocrat Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
“I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing,” Spartz wrote in a post on X. “I do not need to be involved in circuses.”
Spartz wrote that she would rather spend her time in office not carrying out the functions of that office but helping DOGE and Representative Thomas Massie, who similarly committed himself to working with DOGE, “to save our Republic.”
Spartz currently serves on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, including two subcommittees: the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, as well as the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. She also holds positions on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Republican Policy Committee.
Apparently, DOGE’s mission to gut federal funding to essential services is far more important than any of those things. Musk and Ramaswamy have floated plans to slash the budgets of public broadcasting, Planned Parenthood, and “entitlement programs” such as Medicare and Medicaid—with the hopes of cutting government spending by $2 trillion by July 2026.
This isn’t the first time Spartz, who was elected in 2020, has tried to get out of doing her job.
In October 2023, Spartz criticized Congress’s approach to the national debt and threatened to resign. “If Congress does not pass a debt commission this year to move the needle on the crushing national debt and inflation, at least at the next debt ceiling increase at the end of 2024, I will not continue sacrificing my children for this circus with a complete absence of leadership, vision, and spine,” she warned. “I cannot save this Republic alone.”
Spartz’s latest move reportedly comes in response to the House Republican Steering Committee declining to give her a post on the Ways and Means Committee. Her decision could further imperil the caucus’s already razor-thin majority in the chamber.
House Democrats voted Tuesday to elect Representative Gerry Connelly as the party’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, beating a bid from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and proving once again that they have learned absolutely nothing.
Connolly beat Ocasio-Cortez by 131 to 84, Politico reporter Daniella Diaz posted on X.
Punchbowl News reported last week that Connolly had a powerful ally pulling for him: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had set her sights on quashing the New York progressive’s shot at leading the House of Representatives’ key investigative arm.
As of last week, Ocasio-Cortez had reportedly won the support of the majority of Democrats on the Oversight Committee, a group made up of younger, more progressive members of the party, but Connolly was triumphant in Monday’s House Democratic Steering Committee vote, which selected him 34 to 27.
Connolly was ultimately favored by the majority of the House’s Democratic Caucus.
MAGA Republican Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, said last week that he favored Ocasio-Cortez for the coveted spot.
While Connolly, a 16-year House veteran, is a seasoned investigator, he has some serious red flags. He is part of the old guard of establishment Democrats who have struggled in recent elections, and earlier this year, the 74-year-old Virginia lawmaker announced that he had been diagnosed with esophagus cancer.
By comparison, the 35-year-old Cortez has proven to be a lightning rod in the House—both good and bad—and winning a high-ranking position would........