Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records with information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach. It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved,…

Read More Read More

CNN reports: For weeks, the Trump administration has made a series of rather curious moves related to the Jeffrey Epstein files. It has gone back on its promises of extensive disclosure. It has misled about the situation. It has strained to avoid acknowledging President Donald Trump’s ties to Epstein. It has treated Ghislaine Maxwell suspiciously well in still-unexplained ways. And it has taken actions geared toward supposed transparency that didn’t appear all that transparent. The whole thing has several of…

Read More Read More

The Daily Beast reports: A rebel Republican congressman has invited multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein to a press conference at the U.S. Capitol as part of a bipartisan push to force the release of legal files linked to the late pedophile. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a thorn in Donald Trump’s side for his frequent objections to the president’s spending bills and foreign policies, said that he and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna will be co-hosting the Sept. 3 conference. The…

Read More Read More

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge will hear arguments on whether the Trump administration violated federal law when it deployed National Guard soldiers and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles following June protests over immigration raids. President Donald Trump’s administration federalized California National Guard members and sent them to the second-largest U.S. city over the objections of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and city leaders, after protests erupted June 7 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested people at multiple locations….

Read More Read More

Asha Rangappa writes: In February, I wrote a piece for Substack called “A Battle for the Soul of the FBI.” That battle is (pretty much) over, and I’m sad to say that the FBI — at least the one we knew — lost. Weirdly, I’m writing this on the same evening that William Webster, the FBI’s third director, died at the age of 101, a little more than a century after the FBI’s first and longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover,…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: If Republicans succeed in pulling off an aggressively partisan gerrymander of congressional districts in Texas, they will owe the Supreme Court a debt of gratitude. In the two decades Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has led the Supreme Court, the justices have reshaped American elections not just by letting state lawmakers like those in Texas draw voting maps warped by politics, but also by gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and amplifying the…

Read More Read More

Anna Bower writes: A bitter political and legal battle is unfolding in Texas. On Sunday, more than 51 Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives fled the state in an effort to block Republican attempts to re-draw the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Hours later, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to remove the absent lawmakers from office if they didn’t return for a scheduled floor debate by 3 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 4. In response, the Democrats invoked a…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The Trump administration is escalating its efforts to punish lawyers whom it sees as obstacles to the president’s agenda. The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to impose “substantial monetary sanctions” on a California lawyer who briefly halted but ultimately failed to block the deportation of an immigrant from Laos who pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the 1990s. Joshua Schroeder, an immigration and intellectual property attorney based in Los Angeles, appears to be the first target…

Read More Read More

Renee DiResta writes: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has recently released a series of declassified documents she claims expose a “treasonous conspiracy” by former President Barack Obama and his top intelligence officials to sabotage Donald Trump. Gabbard’s performance—part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to retcon “Russiagate”—led to an announcement yesterday by Attorney General Pam Bondi assigning an as-yet-unknown federal prosecutor to convene a grand jury investigation into President Obama and others. Before diving into the barrage…

Read More Read More

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University yesterday filed and today made public an almost-two-hundred-page brief describing evidence presented during trial in a case challenging the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen faculty and students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The case was filed in the spring on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), AAUP’s Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers campus chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association. Judge William G. Young of the U.S….

Read More Read More

CNN reports: Numerous victims of Jeffrey Epstein took aim at the “public legitimization” of his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell as they urged a federal judge considering unsealing grand jury transcripts to take their privacy into account when making his decision. Lawyers Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent numerous victims, including a woman who testified at Maxwell’s criminal trial, also questioned the motives of the Justice Department as the Trump administration tries to tamp down criticism from some of his most…

Read More Read More