Attention to the Unseen

The Hill reports: President Trump has nominated a former White House official and Project 2025 author to be the Interior Department’s internal watchdog, a move that critics say could hurt the integrity of the office’s investigations. Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, one of the authors of a chapter of the conservative policy playbook and a former official in the White House Office of Personnel Management during the first Trump administration, to be the department’s inspector general. Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector…

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Reuters reports: In one courtroom after another, federal judges have accused U.S. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department of an extraordinary spate of misconduct, including making false statements, failing to comply with court orders and improperly using the legal system to harass political opponents. Such rebukes might be expected to trigger a flurry of activity within the department’s two ​internal watchdogs tasked with policing the government’s most powerful law-enforcement agency. But shrinking staffs and fears of political retribution have largely sidelined…

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The Associated Press reports: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to equip officers with body cameras in the next two months but the agency’s policy gives it broad control over what footage will be made public by specifying any releases must be in its “best interests.” After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown…

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NBC News reports: An organization representing career Internal Revenue Service employees has joined a lawsuit over the contentious settlement reached in connection with President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, challenging a carve-out that would give him and members of his family immunity from certain tax audits. A Jan. 6 prosecutor fired by the Trump administration and others previously sued to block a fund that could have gone to Trump allies who said they were victims of weaponization, potentially including…

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  The Washington Post reports: Attorneys for the former Olympian who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are asking a judge to ensure federal prosecutors don’t have a chance to reopen the case against him. In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for David Hearn pushed back against the Justice Department’s move to dismiss the charge against their client “without prejudice,” which would allow the department to prosecute him later. Lawyers Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann and Steve…

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  Camila Lourdes Galarza reports: Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the…

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Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly campaigned for his second term as a champion of free expression, vowing in his January 2025 inaugural address to stop what he described as years of “government censorship.” Since then, a wave of court rulings has concluded his administration has done the opposite. Reuters identified 75 federal-judge rulings finding Trump’s government infringed on ​First-Amendment rights including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press. The unprecedented pushback on constitutional grounds has included repeated findings…

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The New York Times reports: A pair of documents issued by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, that narrow or dissolve aspects of a deal to resolve President Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. have met the demands of two Republican holdouts. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas refused to support Mr. Blanche’s nomination unless he committed in writing to dropping a $1.8 billion fund funneling taxpayer money to the president’s allies and putting stricter limits…

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NPR reports: Early one morning this June, Treasure Thoreson was drinking coffee on her couch in Minneapolis when she heard a knock at the front door. “I go and I see a woman standing there in office clothes, but with a Homeland Security vest over the top. And I see six more agents standing in my front yard,” Thoreson told NPR. “She said, ‘We have a warrant for your arrest, for conspiracy.’” Thoreson, a special education teacher, was still in…

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The New York Times reports: Jeanine Pirro faced the cameras on July 2 with characteristic self-assurance to announce the indictment of the 67-year-old ex-Olympian David Hearn for trashing “sacred” government property, President Trump’s highly prized but shoddily renovated Reflecting Pool. “This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,” said Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, disclosing felony vandalism charges against Mr. Hearn for touching the lining of the pool in front of…

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Ankush Khardori writes: “Todd Blanche is a STAR,” President Trump declared defiantly on social media on Thursday as he sought to clear resistance from two Senate Republicans to his nominee for attorney general. Instead of quickly acceding to the senators’ modest requests — for written guarantees confirming the elimination of a slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and the limiting of a tax immunity deal for Mr. Trump — the president raised withdrawing Mr. Blanche’s nomination until next year, after…

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