Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: The Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Los Angeles has been illegally serving in the role since July, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Bill Essayli, Trump’s pick in April to temporarily lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, should have departed the post by July 31 under a 120-day limit imposed by federal law, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright concluded. An unusual maneuver by Attorney General Pam Bondi to extend Essayli’s tenure into 2026…

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David A. Graham writes: Imagine for a moment that it’s late on Election Day, November 3, 2026. Republicans have kept their majority in the Senate, but too many House races are still uncalled to tell who has won that chamber. Control seems like it will come down to two districts in Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE agents and National Guardsmen have been deployed there since that summer, ostensibly in response to criminal immigrants, though crime has been dropping for several years….

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Judge J. Michael Luttig writes: Donald Trump is clearly willing to subvert an election in order to hold on to the power he so craves, and he is now fully enabled to undermine national elections. No one can prevent him from remaining president of the United States for a constitutionally prohibited third term—except the American people, in whom ultimate power resides under the Constitution of the United States. On July 4, 1776, nearly 250 years ago, America freed itself forever…

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Charlie Savage writes: Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart. A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have…

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TPM reports: A Chicago federal judge on Friday demanded that CBP commander and federal escalation impresario Greg Bovino appear next week in her courtroom after he was accused of openly violating one of her orders. Attorneys in the case said on Thursday that Bovino had flung a canister of tear gas at a crowd of protestors in Chicago, days after he returned from a two-week absence due to a purported groin injury. They included an image and a link to…

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Don Moynihan writes: President Trump’s personalist presidency is driven by a simple logic: protect friends and punish enemies. The shutdown encapsulates this worldview. Trump is cancelling spending in blue states and cities and firing employees in “Democrat programs.” Even more worrying: he is using the shutdown to woo our military and other armed agents, with the goal of turning them into loyal friends as he pursues “the enemy from within.” Trump says that he can determine if the armed forces…

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Claire O. Finkelstein, Brenner M. Fissell, Mitt Regan and Benjamin R. Farley write: The Supreme Court is poised to decide a potentially momentous question for U.S. democracy: can the president unilaterally deploy federal troops on U.S. soil over the objections of state governors? In Trump v. Illinois, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether to issue a stay of a district court’s injunction of the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The government’s brief argues there is “no reason…

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Will Freeman writes: President Dina Boluarte this month became the third Peruvian leader to be impeached in five years. With an approval rating hovering around 3 percent, she had become, by some estimates, one of the most loathed elected heads of state in the world. After her ouster, you would think the country would be celebrating. Ms. Boluarte, who was thrust into office in December 2022 after her predecessor was impeached, was widely blamed by Peruvians for failing to prevent…

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  The Daily Beast reports: Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon openly shared that there are plans to help Donald Trump circumvent the 22nd Amendment and secure a third presidential term. In an interview with The Economist, Bannon told the magazine’s editors, “He’s gonna get a third term, Trump ’28, Trump is gonna be president ’28 so people just ought to get accommodated with that.” When asked by editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes about the 22nd Amendment, Bannon replied, “There’s…

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The New York Times reports: The first body washed ashore on Trinidad’s northeastern coast soon after the United States carried out its first strike in September on a boat in the Caribbean. Villagers said the corpse had burn marks on its face and was missing limbs, as if it had been mangled by an explosion. The tides deposited another corpse on a nearby beach days later, drawing a wake of vultures. Its face was similarly unrecognizable, and its right leg…

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Politico reports: Republican Sen. Thom Tillis condemned President Donald Trump’s move to pardon cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao on Thursday, saying it sends “a bad signal.” “I don’t like it,” the retiring North Carolina Republican told reporters. “He was convicted. He’s not innocent.” His comments signal that some GOP lawmakers are uneasy with the move to pardon Zhao, who pleaded guilty in November 2023 to money laundering-related charges. Zhao, often known as CZ, founded the crypto exchange Binance, which federal prosecutors…

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Garrett Graff writes: The destruction this week of the East Wing of the White House has been uniquely shocking, a physical manifestation of what Donald Trump is doing to our presidency and our country — the excavators and heavy equipment demolishing a 120-year-old literal piece of American history feels in many ways a microcosm of so many Trump controversies. It came out of left field, with no real warning or public debate, no permissions asked or given, to serve Donald…

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