Attention to the Unseen

Michael Scherer writes: Days after Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to put an end to the Justice Department’s revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, captains of the legal resistance gathered by Zoom. Norm Eisen, a former attorney for Barack Obama’s White House, had convened lawyers, Democratic communications strategists, a neoconservative Trump critic, and a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. This one was big, Eisen said from his parked car in Baltimore, where he had traveled for a lawsuit to overturn…

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The Guardian reports: The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan. Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington….

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The New York Times reports: When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as…

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The New York Times reports: The White House has informed Congress it intends to cancel $4.9 billion that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs, invoking a little-known and legally untested power to slash spending without their approval. The 15-page notification, sent to Congress on Thursday night and reviewed by The New York Times, is the administration’s first attempt to push through what is known as a “pocket rescission.” It is an effort to unilaterally claw back money that has already…

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The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to secure a felony assault indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter. The remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington was the second time in recent days that it was unable to persuade grand jurors to bring an indictment in a felony assault case against a federal…

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Politico reports: A federal judge has forcefully rejected a highly unusual lawsuit the Trump administration filed against 15 other judges whom the Justice Department accused of hindering the president’s mass deportation agenda. In tossing out the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen — an appointee of Donald Trump — lamented what he described as the White House’s months-long “smear” of the federal judiciary. Cullen wrote in a 39-page decision Tuesday that the lawsuit was unprecedented, defective and the wrong way…

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Nick Miroff writes: In a video produced by the Department of Homeland Security this month, two tricked-out ICE vehicles roll around on the National Mall to “Toes” by rapper DaBaby: “My heart so cold I think I’m done with ice (uh, brr) / Said if I leave her, she gon’ die / Well … you done with life.” The vehicles feature a new ICE logo and DEFEND THE HOMELAND in block letters, painted in a color scheme similar to the…

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The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Monday reduced the charges against a woman accused last month of assaulting an F.B.I. agent during a protest against immigration officials in Washington, refiling her case as a misdemeanor after they were unable to persuade three grand juries over a month to indict her with a felony. It is highly unusual for prosecutors to fail even once — let alone three times — to obtain an indictment from a grand jury given…

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Video of the arrest of Amanda Trebach, a member of the immigrant rights’ group Unión del Barrio and an ICU nurse, who was monitoring ICE operations in the Los Angeles, begs many questions not the least of which is this: who is ICE recruiting?   “Yanis Varoufuckice” recently attended a Department of Homeland Security job fair at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia where they spent two days talking to people looking for jobs with ICE: One of the…

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Barton Gellman writes: At first glance, President Trump’s Truth Social post alleging voting fraud did not look especially alarming — not, anyway, by this president’s singular standards. Mr. Trump’s long-debunked lies about stolen elections are no less malignant in 2025 than they were in 2020 and 2021, during his concerted effort to overturn his loss at the polls. Still, by now, persistent repetition has diminished the power of those lies to shock. And yet something quite shocking did emerge from…

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The Los Angeles Times reports: This year’s most far-reaching immigration case is likely to decide if immigration agents in Los Angeles are free to stop, question and arrest Latinos they suspect are here illegally. President Trump promised the “largest mass deportation operation” in American history, and he chose to begin aggressive street sweeps in Los Angeles in early June. The Greater Los Angeles area is “ground zero for the effects of the border crisis,” his lawyers told the Supreme Court…

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