Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department has moved on two fronts to chip away at some of the last traces of its vast investigation into the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, aligning itself ever more closely with President Trump’s own efforts to whitewash the events of that day. On Friday evening, just as the holiday weekend was beginning, federal prosecutors in Washington filed motions to formally dismiss the most serious criminal cases stemming from Jan….

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    Hawaii just made history, becoming the first state in the nation to effectively ban dark money in elections. The new law takes a novel approach: rather than trying to restrict corporate speech, it redefines the powers corporations have in the first place — and political spending is not among them. The strategy, known as the “Corporate Power Reset,” was developed by Tom Moore of the Center for American Progress. And at least a dozen states are now working…

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The Guardian reports: Britain has created a new breed of political prisoners through the systematic incarceration of people acting to prevent climate breakdown and the annihilation of Gaza, a report claims. The research by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the protest group Defend Our Juries says that custodial sentences for acts of direct action or civil disobedience were once rare but are now being imposed with increasing length and frequency. Their report, which will be launched on Tuesday,…

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has pulled back its aggressive operations in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis after bad polling indicated the crackdown on illegal immigration was unpopular. In its wake, however, a new approach is emerging on legal immigration, one that makes it harder for those abroad to enter the United States, and for those already here on a temporary basis to stay. In recent months, Trump administration officials have discussed the legal immigration system as…

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Tennessee Lookout reports: A federal judge on Friday dismissed a criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old man living in Maryland who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last year, calling the prosecution “vindictive and selective.” “Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second … That is the situation here,” U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to…

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NBC News reports: Screaming, yelling and accusations of self-dealing. That’s how Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday described a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that’s drawn bipartisan opposition. On his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” the Texas senator described the meeting as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.” “Fiery does not begin to cut it,” Cruz said. “My…

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Rep. Jamie Raskin writes: These days it takes a spectacular burst of corruption to get the attention of our scandal-weary nation, but President Trump and his administration have managed, once again, to transfix Americans by establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund in the Department of Justice that will undoubtedly be used to line the pockets of Mr. Trump’s partisans and foot soldiers — with your tax dollars. The creation of this fund is a stupefying feat of self-dealing, part of…

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