Attention to the Unseen

By Robert Faturechi This story was originally published by ProPublica A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son. ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,”…

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Politico reports: The Trump administration will drop its $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that was widely criticized as a payout for the president’s allies, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a congressional hearing Tuesday. “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” said Blanche in remarks before the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Justice. Republican blowback from the announcement of the fund has stalled movement on an immigration enforcement bill in the Senate, where GOP…

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The Washington Post reports: A convicted Jan. 6 rioter who later said that he regretted his participation in the U.S. Capitol attack has been hired by the Trump administration to work inside a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations, according to four people familiar with the matter. The appointment of Elias Irizarry, who was 19 at the time of the riot in 2021, to a post in the Defense Department’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office has…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump is retreating from plans for a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” after a fierce backlash from congressional Republicans, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the decision. White House officials communicated the move Monday to top Republicans on Capitol Hill, the people said. The Justice Department, which was set to administer the fund, also indicated Monday it would “abide by the Court’s ruling” to halt progress after a federal judge in Virginia on Friday temporarily…

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The New York Times reports: In late April, a lawyer for the Justice Department told a federal judge that her colleagues had been in the midst of negotiations with a Rhode Island hospital about turning over gender-transition treatment health records, only for the hospital’s lawyers to stop responding. But Judge Mary S. McElroy of Federal District Court in Rhode Island concluded that was not true. While the government claimed it had not heard from the hospital since February, emails showed…

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Paul Krugman writes: There was a time when anti-immigration activists claimed not to hate immigrants as people. Their concern, they insisted, was only about illegal immigrants, the purported crime wave they caused, or the loss of jobs for the native born. If you believed any of that, you were naive. The Trump administration is trying to drive out all immigrants, legal as well as undocumented, with almost no pretense that its pogroms serve any wider social or economic purpose. And…

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The New York Times reports: The tax immunity agreement was more like a rescue operation than a formal legal settlement. It called for the I.R.S. to absolve Mr. Trump and his businesses of all audits they were currently facing — including a yearslong battle with the tax agency that could have cost the president more than $100 million. That fight stemmed partly from a refund that Mr. Trump had claimed — and collected — starting in about 2010. He justified…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump’s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, a striking loss of legal talent that has left some agencies pushing to find attorneys to carry out his agenda. Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data….

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The Intercept reports: A company run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, hired by the Israeli government to push pro-Israel views on a major conservative media network, has directed $13 million from Israel to several Republican digital strategy firms and allies, according to a previously unreported document filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Parscale was hired in part to influence major right-wing Christian media company Salem Media Group, where he is also an executive. His firm spent hundreds…

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The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Miami reopened President Trump’s $10 billion case against the I.R.S. in a striking turnabout, saying that she wanted to investigate “grievous allegations” that the hasty deal to resolve it was “premised on deception.” The ruling by the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, on Friday to revive the case shortly after closing it was a significant blow both to Mr. Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week, and to the Justice…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump’s top aides have discussed whether he should kill the administration’s nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund in exchange for getting immigration enforcement funding passed next month, according to people familiar with the matter. More than a dozen Republican senators have privately urged top Trump aides to drop the fund since its creation last week, said people familiar with the outreach, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is usually supportive of the president’s…

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The Associated Press reports: David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion new fund for people claiming to be victims of a weaponized government. He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece. “I…

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