Attention to the Unseen

Axios reports: Former President Barack Obama issued a forceful denunciation of the Trump administration’s legal pursuit of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar over suspicions she fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship decades ago, an allegation the Minnesota lawmaker has called “disgusting lies.” Why it matters: Obama — who faced false claims for years from Donald Trump that he wasn’t an American citizen — is selective about when he weighs in on political issues or the president. His decision to speak out reflects his…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: Lawyers for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) on Friday accused federal authorities of ignoring key restrictions that a judge placed on the search of the lawmaker’s D.C. residence this week and demanded the immediate return of all property seized from the home. In a letter sent to Justice Department prosecutors, attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz condemned the investigation into Omar’s immigration history as a politically motivated attack on one of President Donald Trump’s chief critics, saying…

Read More Read More

Mother Jones reports: “I have been outspoken on wanting public executions for over a decade.” So said Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Anduril Industries, a military technology company that sells autonomous drones and software to the Defense Department, Customs and Border Protection, and militaries abroad in a vocal defense of “public and brutal” executions in general, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan in particular. Executions are the “ultimate example…

Read More Read More

The New Republic reports: The new White House press secretary is facing a legal complaint over misrepresenting her credentials as a lawyer. The Campaign for Accountability, a liberal nonprofit organization focusing on ethics, filed a complaint with the State Bar of California Wednesday over whether Katie Zacharia falsely claimed to work as a lawyer. The complaint cited her claims of holding titles such as “outside counsel” to the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, and “general counsel” to a…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: The president on Tuesday suggested on social media that Ms. Omar had engaged in fraud to make millions of dollars. He also suggested she had engaged in immigration fraud. “America wants answers, and we want them, NOW!” he said. Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and retired law professor, said that the Trump Justice Department had so eroded trust that it had “sort of forfeited the right to a presumption of regularity,” a legal…

Read More Read More

The Hill reports: President Trump’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia raised eyebrows on Tuesday when she was asked where she passed the bar exam, telling reporters that she did so when she moved to China. Zacharia made the remarks on the White House South Lawn alongside Trump before heading to Alaska with him for a campaign rally. “Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?” a reporter asked Trump, who turned to Zacharia to ask her, “which state?” “When…

Read More Read More

Natasha Lennard writes: In the mode of historic fascist regimes, President Donald Trump’s administration sent federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to raid the home of a political opponent, singled out for her race and religion, in a transparent effort to strip her of her citizenship. On Monday, agents with Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative wing, conducted a search of the Washington, D.C., home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., with federal officials describing the incursion as part of…

Read More Read More

The Hill reports: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood behind the Trump administration’s decision to livestream the military execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, despite growing bipartisan criticism over the plan. In an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Mullin dismissed concerns coming from across party lines that publicizing Hasan’s death by firing squad could inspire extremists or turn the convicted mass murderer into a martyr. “First of all, no one has…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: The US is facing worldwide condemnation over a “barbaric” plan to execute a disabled man by firing squad and livestream it to the public, with critics comparing the Trump administration to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan. The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would be livestreamed on 3 December. The United Nations’ office of the high…

Read More Read More

Democracy Docket reports: In a major ruling Friday, a federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s nationwide voter roll campaign, delivering a damaging blow to the Department of Justice’s effort to obtain states’ unredacted voter rolls, compare them against federal data and pressure states to remove voters it deems ineligible. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan vacated what DOJ internally called its “list maintenance project,” finding that the department exceeded its statutory authority and violated federal law. The ruling goes far…

Read More Read More