Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies investigated by the Justice Department under President Biden, creating an ethical, legal and political minefield for Republicans and the department’s leadership. The unusual plan, which Democrats and former government officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, has yet to be finalized or approved, according to three people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition…

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CNN reports: It was less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 when the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary. The official conducting the briefing, Joseph Tirrell, handed Blanche and his then-top deputy Emil Bove, who was also in the conference room, a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics, according…

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Politico reports: Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece…

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Politico reports: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urged Americans on Tuesday to defend the judicial system against salvos that jeopardize its independence, warning that such threats have the potential to do serious damage to American democracy. “Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said during an appearance…

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The New York Times reports: Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April. In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce…

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TVP World reports: Ex-minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is facing multiple charges in Poland, confirmed he was in the US on Sunday night after media reported his visa was personally approved by President Donald Trump, despite opposition from senior US officials. Ziobro—a former justice minister who was one of the most influential figures in the previous administration led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party—admitted to travelling to the US during an interview with Polish private conservative broadcaster TV Republika…

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The Guardian reports: The reaction speed of southern states to the US supreme court’s decision last week in Louisiana v Callais has been breathtaking for voting rights activists. One week after Callais, Louisiana’s governor has ordered the state’s ongoing congressional election to be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge. Alabama’s Republican-majority legislature is drafting legislation in a special session that will allow it to set…

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Reuters reports: The Trump administration blitz that flooded Minnesota with immigration agents also dramatically slowed other federal investigations and prosecutions into an array of serious crimes, a Reuters review of federal court records found. New gun and drug prosecutions stalled. Several top prosecutors quit. Some federal agents disappeared from drug task forces and gang cases. Others took the unusual step of bringing their investigations to state authorities. U.S. President Donald Trump touted the immigration operation as an urgent crime-fighting effort,…

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Ari Berman reports: Just a week after the Supreme Court effectively destroyed the key remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee on Thursday is set to become the first Southern state to pass a new redistricting map eliminating a majority-Black district. The hastily drawn map abolishes the state’s last Democratic district by splitting the city of Memphis, which is more than 60 percent Black, into three districts: all of them predominantly white Republican held seats that stretch hundreds of…

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Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: One of J. Edgar Hoover’s greatest reforms at the FBI was his embrace of fingerprinting. During the 1930s, visitors to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., received souvenir fingerprint cards featuring his name. The men who succeeded him as FBI director were more discreet and judicious, mindful of the cult of personality that had developed around Hoover. They generally avoided giving out branded swag. But then came Kash Patel. President Trump’s FBI director has a great deal…

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