Trump Dealt Huge Blow as Judge Allows Mahmoud Khalil Case to Continue

Trying to usurp Canada is becoming less and less of a joke to Donald Trump.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, the president claimed that the reason he’s so tough on America’s northern neighbor is because it’s “meant to be our fifty-first state.”

“You’re tougher with Canada than you are with our biggest adversaries. Why?” asked Laura Ingraham.

“Only because it’s meant to be our fifty-first state,” Trump said, when Ingraham attempted to interject. “No, no but listen to this for a second.”

“We need their territory. They have territorial advantage. We’re not going to let them get close to China, right?” pressed the Fox host.

“Look, I deal with every country—directly or indirectly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump said about the longtime U.S. ally.

Trump then went on to take another jab at Canada’s former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, even though Trudeau was succeeded by Mark Carney last week.

“Now, this was Trudeau—good old Justin. I call him ‘Governor Trudeau.’ His people were nasty, and they weren’t telling the truth. They never tell the truth,” Trump said. “You know, they’d say, ‘We don’t charge,’ and they do, they charge tremendous.”

Trump’s tariff plans aren’t going over well with the American public. Instead, they have sparked fears that the country—which just last year had a strong economy—could be en route for a recession. Trump’s foreign policy, which involves a global trade war, has instigated unrest with some of America’s longest allies.

Trump has even admitted that his tariffs will destabilize the economy. Last week, he floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, suggesting that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.

The market continued to tumble last week as Trump’s 25 percent levy on all steel and aluminum imports took effect, as well as our global allies’ retaliatory efforts.

In his exit message, Trudeau pleaded with the American public to see past Trump’s divisive agenda, which he argued was dropping America’s Western allies in favor of a rocky relationship with Russia.

“What do the American people think?” Trudeau said earlier this month. “How do Americans feel about jettisoning one’s friends and allies in favor of a country that has never wished Americans well, and continues to act in ways that harm the global economy and, specifically, the American economy and American values and principles?”

Feeling more paranoid because of the Donald Trump administration? Don’t worry, Elon Musk is feeling it too.

The billionaire bureaucrat stopped by Fox News’s Hannity Tuesday on a victory lap from the successful return of two astronauts in a SpaceX capsule. But Musk got sidetracked whining about his Tesla dealerships being vandalized and alleging that he was the victim of a larger conspiracy—one led by people who wish to see him dead.

“It’s really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of, really, hatred and violence from the Left,” Musk told Sean Hannity. “I always thought that the left, that Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, they’re firebombing dealerships, they’re firing bullets into dealerships, they’re just, you know, smashing up Teslas.

“Tesla is a peaceful company. We’ve never done anything harmful,” Musk said. “I’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve only done productive things.”

Musk claimed that the perpetrators must have a “mental illness thing going on here, because this doesn’t make any sense,” before suddenly claiming that all the acts were connected.

“I think there are larger forces at work as well. Because, I mean, who’s funding and who’s coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

Hannity surmised that Musk was being wrongly targeted and that his only crime was being aligned with Trump and identifying troves of supposed government waste, fraud, and abuse.

“It turns out when you take away people’s, you know, the money that they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset,” Musk said. “And they basically wanna kill me because I’m stopping their fraud and they wanna hurt Tesla, because we’re stopping the terrible waste and corruption in the government. And, well, I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.”

Unfortunately for Musk, Tesla is not just a “peaceful” company but the customer-facing branch of his corporate takeover of the U.S. government, which has seen essential lifesaving programs slashed and thousands of people out of work. And customer feedback can be harsh. Trump has even called it domestic terrorism.

Musk has managed to insulate himself from any criticism thus far by clinging to his so-called “productivity.” But in many cases, Musk’s productivity isn’t even real. The Department of Government Efficiency’s website claims $115 billion in savings from slashed government spending—but a closer look revealed that only $35.1 billion was actually listed in the itemized cuts, with only $12.6 billion of that being verifiable. Of the scores of federal workers his organization saw terminated, many are currently being reinstated because the way he fired them was illegal.

What Musk also fails to see is that it doesn’t matter how productive you are, if you’re not actually working toward anything good. In any case, Musk’s limp concerns for his personal safety as the grand vizier in the face of an angry mob pales in comparison to those who are actually vulnerable to state violence.

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo grew fed up Tuesday morning with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s feeble attempt to defend Trump’s tariff policies.

“As important as a tariff are some of these non-tariff barriers, where they have domestic content production, where they do testing on … food, our products, that bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products,” Bessent mentioned.

“See, these are the things that people are really worried about. Because they first thought it was just about trade. Then, they thought it was just about fentanyl. Then, after that we talked about, ‘Well, maybe it’s currency manipulation.’ Now you’re talking about food testing,” Fox News’s Bartiromo pressed. “And when I bring up the issue of clarity, that’s what I’m talking about, and that’s what I’m hearing from corporate America, that we’re not sure where this is going.”

“But of course, we will get resolution on April 2,” Batiromo continued, referring to the date Trump plans to announce yet another set of tariffs.

Trump has continued to portray the economic impacts of his tariffs as temporary, transitional, and even positive. That could not be further from the truth, as Americans in both blue and red states prepare to take a direct hit from the president’s own spite.

A right-wing Minnesota state senator, who infamously co-sponsored a bill Monday to label “Trump Derangement Syndrome” a mental illness, was arrested hours later for allegedly soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Senator Justin Eichorn was arrested at 6 p.m. Monday in Bloomington, Minnesota, and is being held in the city’s jail after sending messages to and arranging a meetup with a person who he thought was a 16-year-old girl but was actually a Bloomington Police Department detective. After the arrest was made public, his Republican colleagues in the Minnesota Senate, including Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth, called for his resignation. 

“While he is entitled to due process, we must hold legislators to a higher standard,” Demuth said in a statement.

It’s quite a fall for the 40-year-old Eichorn, who is married with four children and has served in the Minnesota Senate since 2016. His day began with himself and four other Republican senators introducing the bill to declare “Trump Derangement Syndrome” a mental illness, describing it as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump.”

The bill was attacked by state Democrats, who asked that it be withdrawn. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy called it “possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history.” 

“If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues,” Murphy said in a statement. “If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president.”

This isn’t the first bill Eichorn has sponsored that has verged on the absurd. Last year, he co-sponsored a bill inspired by the discredited “chemtrails” conspiracy theory, which included pseudoscience such as “xenobiotic electromagnetism and fields.” Now, unless he resigns, he’ll have to conduct legislative activity under the suspicion of being a child sex offender. 

Trump’s Justice Department believes the president has the authority to fire agency heads based on age and gender, according to a report from Talking Points Memo.

The stunning argument came during a testy court hearing Tuesday on Trump’s firing of board members at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“Could the president decide that he wasn’t going to appoint or allow to remain in office any female heads of agencies or any heads over 40 years old?” Judge Karen Henderson of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric McArthur, at one point in the arguments.

“I think that that would be within the president’s constitutional authority under the removal power,” McArthur said. “There would be separate questions about whether that would violate other provisions of the Constitution.”

Lower courts have already ruled against Trump’s firings of the board members, and the panel of three judges on Tuesday appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s reasoning. But the Trump administration welcomes these challenges so that it can drive its aggressive policies to the nation’s highest court, where they have an overwhelming ideological advantage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that the United States and its allies end intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine in order for hostilities to end.

Putin reportedly made this point during his phone call with President Trump on Tuesday, and the detail was conveniently not mentioned in the White House’s readout of the call. The White House’s account said that Russia agreed to an energy and infrastructure ceasefire as a first step toward a “maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace,” with negotiations beginning “immediately in the Middle East.” Trump is already celebrating, calling it a “very good and productive” call.

But Russia’s demand is not likely to go over well with Ukraine or its allies. Russia isn’t likely to end intelligence activities against Ukraine even in a permanent ceasefire, for one. Ukraine’s supporters in Congress too will see ending military and intelligence support as abandoning the country. Even if Ukraine isn’t fighting Russia, it would still presumably maintain a military.

Perhaps that is one of Russia’s goals: to weaken Ukraine’s defense capabilities and claim that it will take responsibility for defending the country. To Ukrainians, that might bring back painful memories of Russian hegemony under the Soviet Union and would be a nonstarter. After all, Russia invaded Ukraine allegedly due to fears of the country seeking NATO membership, an independent relationship with Russia, and closer ties to the West.

Regardless of why Russia would want military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine to end, it’s telling that the White House didn’t mention this demand. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have made no secret about their inclinations toward Russia and antipathy to continued support of Ukraine. Perhaps they thought it would be hashed out in negotiations, or that Russia wouldn’t mention it. Either way, it doesn’t speak well of Russia’s intentions for a postwar Ukraine, and no one outside of the White House or Kremlin is going to like it.

Three weeks into his gubernatorial campaign, and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is already pathetically parroting Donald Trump’s name-changing stunt. 

During an address to the Lucas County Republican Party last week, Ramaswamy pitched changing the name of one of the Great Lakes, while boasting about Ohio’s natural resources.

“I like what President Trump’s done with the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America,” Ramaswamy said to some applause and laughter. “Anybody think if there’s a Lake Michigan, maybe there should be a Lake Ohio around here?” 

“I’m feeling that, so we’ll talk about that a little bit more as this campaign progresses,” Ramawamy continued. 

Lake Erie runs across Ohio’s northern border, as well as Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan—and the southern border of Ontario, a Canadian province that is not feeling so friendly toward the U.S. right now.  

A campaign spokesperson told the Cincinnati Enquirer that Ramaswamy was only joking about pursuing a new name for Lake Erie. “The audience understood it was a joke. Perhaps the media will someday get a sense of humor,” the spokesperson said. “Vivek is focused on real policies to Make Ohio Great Again.”

And yet, he seems primarily interested in sucking up to Trump, who saw Ramaswamy banished back to the Midwest after he was surreptitiously dismissed as Elon Musk’s co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency. 

Last month, Trump endorsed Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial run in the state that was the epicenter of the president’s outlandish and racist claims about immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets on the campaign trail. Ramaswamy is currently running against Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, and former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton, a Democrat. 

Even if Ramaswamy was only joking, it’s unclear just how far Trump’s acolytes will go to pay tribute to their president. And while many may had hoped that Trump was only joking about changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, that’s exactly what he did on his first day in office. 

The White House has attempted to enforce the use of this alternative name, cracking down on publications that do not comply with their shared delusion. 

Multiple U.S.-funded news organizations worldwide continue to operate in the face of cuts and purges from the Trump administration.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order to destroy the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The next day, virtually the entire staff at Voice of America was fired, as they are considered federal employees. But other international broadcasters funded by the United States operate as nonprofits that rely on federal grants—and they’re fighting back.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks are all continuing reporting while they prepare for legal challenges to Trump’s order, which they believe is “unlawful.”

“Our pro bono legal team is prepared to take all necessary steps to ensure that RFE/RL continues its Congressionally authorized mission,” wrote Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty board chair Lisa Curtis on LinkedIn.

She continued:

Here are four reasons it’s illegal for USAGM to deny appropriated funds to RFE/RL.

1. It violates the statute governing RFE/RL.

2. It violates Congressional appropriations laws.

3. It violates the U.S. Constitution. The Appropriations Clause and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, and the Impoundment Control Act, cannot be ignored. Justice Kavanaugh agrees and said so in his Aiken County decision in 2013.

4. Finally the grant termination itself is unlawful.

Leaders of the outlets said programming is set to continue until further notice.