Supreme Court Shockingly Stands up to Trump on Press Freedom

The Supreme Court will not take on a case aimed at rescinding press protections via libel lawsuits.

The nation’s highest judiciary rejected an effort Monday by Republican megadonor Steve Wynn, declining to hear his argument for overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 decision that raised the standards required for a plaintiff to win a defamation lawsuit against a media organization.

In that case, the bench unanimously found that it wasn’t enough for reported information to be found false for a plaintiff to win a suit. Instead, Justice William Brennan Jr. argued that in order to win a defamation case, public figures must prove that journalists published details with “actual malice”—as in, a gross recklessness or disregard for the truth.

In a petition filed in February, Wynn claimed that the 61-year-old precedent was “unfit for the modern era.”

“Instead, everyone in the world has the ability to publish any statement with a few keystrokes. And in this age of clickbait journalism, even those members of the legacy media have resorted to libelous headlines and false reports to generate views. This Court need not further this golden era of lies,” the attorney for the former Republican National Committee finance chair wrote.

The high court has thrown out previous attempts to upend the libel standard. In 2022, the Supreme Court refused to hear a similar challenge to the “actual malice” definition when Coral Ridge Ministries Media sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for listing them as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.” But not everyone on the court was in agreement—in a controversial dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas left the door open for possible future attempts to undo the decision, writing that the original ruling was “allowing media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”

Ultimately, the “actual malice” standard for public figures and officials is intended to deter lawsuits from people who don’t need to rely on the legal system in order to correct or address negative coverage. Instead, people in power can call for news conferences or (in the case of elected officials) draft new laws that counteract the narrative of their unwanted media coverage. Times v. Sullivan also protects press organizations from people with enormous wealth who could potentially leverage their financial resources in order to silence criticism of their behavior.

Defamation standards for private figures are different: Average, everyday people suing media organizations for incorrect coverage do not have to prove “actual malice,” and instead only need to show a court that the information was incorrect and damaged their reputation.

Wynn’s case against press protections comes with its own baggage. In 2018, the casino mogul sued the Associated Press for defamation after the newswire reported that two women had accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s.

Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts that year, just two weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire had paid out a $7.5 million settlement to a hired manicurist he allegedly raped.

“After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to,” the Journal reported at the time. “The manicurist said she told Mr. Wynn she didn’t want to have sex and was married, but he persisted in his demands that she do so, and ultimately she did disrobe and they had sex, the people remember her saying.”

The Nevada state Supreme Court ruled against Wynn in November, with Justice Ron Parraguirre writing that “one of the most recognized figures in Nevada” needed to show “clear and convincing evidence to reasonably infer that the publication was made with actual malice.”

This story has been updated.

Greenland and Denmark are not happy with second lady Usha Vance’s planned visit to the island, with Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede calling the move “highly aggressive.”

Vance is traveling to the island on Thursday with Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz, as well as Energy Secretary Chris Wright, ostensibly to watch the territory’s national dogsled race and “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity.” Waltz and Wright also plan to visit the Pituffik space base, a U.S. military facility in northern Greenland.

Egede said that his government, which is serving in a caretaker role since his party was defeated in elections earlier this month, would not meet with the U.S. delegation, criticizing Waltz’s presence. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants the U.S. to annex the island for “national security” reasons.

“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us,” Egede told the Greenland newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission—and the pressure will increase.”

“Until recently, we could trust the Americans, who were our allies and friends, and with whom we enjoyed working closely,” Egede added in the newspaper. “But that time is over.”

Egede’s party, the Inuit Ataqatigiit, favors rapid independence from Denmark and closer ties with the U.S., but lost the territory’s election nearly two weeks ago to the center-right Demokraatit Party, which seeks a slower path to independence. The latter party also criticized the visit, saying that it “once again shows a lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”

Trump has floated sending more U.S. troops to the island and even getting NATO involved. He’s also drawn up military plans to retake the Panama Canal and keeps blathering about making Canada the “fifty-first state.” His tough talk has alarmed people in all three places, who are allies of the U.S., and is worsening the country’s image around the world.

The billionaire who is still bribing people to vote Republican is pushing wildly unsubstantiated claims about paid protesters at the Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallies.

Sanders and AOC started their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour last month, drawing large crowds at multiple rallies. Sanders’s communications director reported a crowd of 30,000 in Denver last Friday. Elon Musk and his reply guys are clearly bothered. 

A post from right-wing media shill Mario Nawfal alleged that “despite claims of 34,000 attendees, GPS data analysis reveals the real number was closer to 20,000—still big, but not record-breaking.

“More revealing? A whopping 84% of those devices had shown up at nine or more other protests, including Antifa/BLM events, pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and Kamala Harris campaign stops,” the post continued.

“The Dems just move around the same group of paid ‘protesters,’” Musk said in a repost of Nawfal. 

Nawfal of course shows absolutely no evidence for the private phone location data he claims to have gathered. Even if we take him at his word (which we shouldn’t), this isn’t the huge gotcha he seems to think it is. These rallies are reaching the most politically active and progressive people within the party. It’s not shocking that people at the Bernie-AOC rally may have gone to other events before. Remember the die-hard MAGA folks that follow Trump around from rally to rally? 

Musk has offered millions in cash for votes and signatures. He has no room to speak on paid protesters. Especially with no real evidence. 

A federal judge questioned the Department of Justice Friday over Donald Trump’s “expanded” use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport planefuls of immigrants without due process over the weekend.

During a hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that Trump’s invocation of the centuries-old wartime law to declare the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force was “unprecedented,” and that the policy ramifications were “troublesome and problematic and concerning,” according to Politico’s senior legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, who documented the hearing in a thread of posts on X.

Boasberg explained that the Trump administration’s application had “expanded” the AEA’s use, whereas in other instances that the law has been invoked, such as during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, “there was no question there was a declaration of war, and who the enemy was,” according to Cheney.

Notably, the United States is not at war with Venezuela.

The judge said that the Trump administration’s application of the AEA was “a long way from the heartland” of the rule, according to journalist Adam Klasfeld.

Lawyers from the ACLU and Democracy Forward had challenged Trump’s use of the wartime law Saturday, asserting that several individuals the government claimed were gang members had been wrongly identified. Boasberg then ordered the Trump administration to temporarily pause deportations under the AEA, but the government continued with the removal of more than 250 individuals.

The Trump administration has refused to reveal the identities of those who were deported or any information on how immigration and customs authorities were able to determine that they were in fact gang members.

During the hearing Friday, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt claimed that the deported Venezuelans were not given a “meaningful” chance to contest their designation as terrorists, and urged that future deportees should receive the opportunity to argue for their innocence, according to Cheney.

The Department of Justice said that habeas petitions would be made available to deportees to challenge their designation under the AEA, but it was unclear how they would fulfill those petitions if they were similarly rushed out of the country.

Boasberg implied that the Trump administration had been anxious to speed along the removal of the alleged gang members, signing the order to do so “in the dark.”

“It seems to me the only reason to do that is if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before there are suits filed,” Boasberg said, according to Cheney.

Donald Trump bragged about releasing the Social Security numbers of hundreds of people during his anticlimactic release of the John F. Kennedy assassination files.

“Eighty thousand pages of documents is a lot to sift through,” a reporter said to Trump on Friday. “Can you just tell us who killed Kennedy?”

“Well, you know, I was given the task of releasing that. Many presidents have gone through it, and they haven’t released. And I said, ‘Release.’ We even released Social Security numbers, I didn’t want anything deleted,” Trump replied. “They said, ‘So what about Social Security?’ People long gone.… We gave Social Security, we gave everything. And the rest is for you to look at.”

These Social Security numbers are from potentially hundreds of people who are alive, not “long gone,” as the president wrongly claimed.

One of them, Reagan-era Justice Department attorney and Trump’s own former campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, was furious about the release of his personal data. “I intend to sue the National Archives,” he told USA Today. “They violated the Privacy Act.”

A former Church Committee staffer also slammed Trump.

“Your Administration doxxed former public servants who staffed 1977-79 congressional investigation by revealing their SSNs. Many are still alive. Completely unnecessary & contributed nothing to JFK assassination understanding,” government accountability lawyer Mark Zaid wrote on X. “I trust you will provide them free credit monitoring.”

The federal government and its agencies are barred from sharing personal records without consent under the Privacy Act of 1974.

The Department of Homeland Security shut down its office in charge of investigating civil rights complaints on Friday.

DHS closed its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was created along with the department in 2002 to advise leadership on civil rights and liberties and to investigate agency complaints on everything from disaster response to immigration enforcement. Its 90 employees were told they will be paid through May 23.

There’s no word on whether the functions of the office will be transferred elsewhere, or what will happen to its $22 million in funding. But it comes as no surprise, considering the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce or eliminate oversight and civil rights offices in other departments. The civil rights division in the Justice Department, for example, has been directed to serve conservative culture-war aims, and much of its other work has been frozen.

The fact that the DHS’s office handles complaints against Immigration and Customs Enforcement was almost certainly a strike against it under this administration, which seeks to fast-track mass deportations regardless of complaints. To hard-line anti-immigration people on the right, civil rights and liberties are just further obstacles to getting rid of as many legal and undocumented immigrants as they can.

At the start of Trump’s second term, his campaign promise of fast-tracking mass deportations raised concerns that legal protections would be disregarded and civil rights violations would skyrocket as more immigrants were detained. Now that appears to be coming true, and getting rid of an office that would investigate those violations is certainly by design.

A federal judge tore into Justice Department lawyers Friday as they struggled to defend Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that she would not be “gaslit” by the lawyers’ attempts to convince her that the policy did not constitute a transgender ban, according to Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney.

“You’re saying one thing in public. You’re saying a different thing in court,” Reyes said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s post on social media that referred to the policy as a ban. 

Earlier this week, Reyes had ruled that the Pentagon could not enforce the policy and had mischaracterized research and ignored evidence to support its conclusion to disallow transgender service members. Last week, Reyes stopped a hearing cold in its tracks so that the lawyers could actually read the studies mentioned, after she found that “virtually every” study cited in the ban contradicted support for Hegseth’s policy.

The judge noted in her ruling that the defense agreed that transgender people “can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence,” and that the government’s claims about their suitability for service were “pure conjecture.”

She delayed the order from going into effect until March 21, to give the Trump administration enough time to pursue an emergency appeal. 

In a new filing Friday, the Department of Justice asked Reyes to dissolve her preliminary injunction. Lawyers argued against her interpretation of Hegseth’s policy disqualifying service members who “have a current diagnosis or history of, or Exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.” The lawyers claimed this rule did not “discriminate against trans-identifying persons as a class.”

Reyes hit back at the lawyers during Friday’s hearing, pushing them to explain how Hegseth’s policy was addressing an actual problem in the U.S. military and not simply creating a “pretext” for discriminating against transgender people, according to Cheney.  

The judge noted there were already policies in place that required military officials to identify people with debilitating medical conditions—which would include those with gender dysphoria that rendered them unable to serve.

“Everything in the record is that it’s a pretext. There is nothing in the record that this was a deliberative process,” Reyes said. 

Will U.S. marching bands be replacing “God Bless America” with “God Save the King”?

Donald Trump had a bizarrely warm reaction to news that Britain’s King Charles would extend a “secret offer” for the United States to join the British Commonwealth, something that the Founding Fathers fought and died to exit nearly 250 years ago.

“I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday, recirculating the story.

It was not clear if Trump was serious or making an odd joke, but several U.K. outlets have reported that the unprecedented offer of “associate membership” is very much real. The Commonwealth is a volunteer association of 56 nations. The majority of them share history as former British colonies, including Canada, India, and Australia.

Charles is the head of the Commonwealth, as well as king of 15 of its member states. Five other members have different monarchs ruling over them, and 36 other members are republics.

The Daily Mail reported that the first extension of the hand-written offer was delivered to Trump by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a visit to the White House last month.

A member of the Royal Commonwealth Society spoke with the Mail on the condition of anonymity about the matter, claiming that America’s potential entry into the Commonwealth was being discussed “at the highest levels.” They believed it would be “a wonderful move that would symbolize Britain’s close relationship with the U.S.”

“Donald Trump loves Britain and has great respect for the Royal Family, so we believe he would see the benefits of this. Associate membership could, hopefully, be followed by full membership, making the Commonwealth even more important as a global organization,” the person added.

As strange as the offer is, it could be an attempt by Charles to quell Trump’s hostility toward long-standing Western alliances as Europe braces for potential war with Russia.

Trump has continually agitated and aggravated America’s allies, positioning the nation as more of a global bully than a policeman, forcing some of America’s friends to reconsider the value of its military protection. Some of those injuries include Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state.

The Trump administration is moving to deport another international student for speaking out against the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine.

One day after Cornell Ph.D. student Momodou Taal, who has dual U.K. and Gambian citizenship, reported unidentified law enforcement agents outside his home, the Justice Department emailed him and his lawyers asking the graduate student to come to ICE headquarters for his detainment.

Taal was suspended for participating in anti-Zionist protests on campus last year. On Sunday, he sued the Trump administration on the grounds that two executive orders used to detain innocent student-activists like Mahmoud Khalil violate the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

Days later, Taal said unidentified agents were outside of his house trying to intimidate him into turning himself in.

“This morning, shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in my lawsuit demanding the courts strike down Trump’s executive orders attacking free speech, law enforcement from an unidentified agency came to my home in Ithaca, New York. I believe they planned to detain me,” Taal wrote on X. “Trump is attempting to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court.… This is part of a continued pattern in the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard for the judiciary.”

Taal’s lawyers then submitted a motion to stop the government from “attempting to detain, remove, or otherwise enforce the two executive orders against Mr. Taal.”

The Justice Department’s email to Taal on Thursday seems to be a way to get around his motion for a temporary restraining order.

“My guess is that someone in ICE told DOJ they were going to do this and DOJ said ‘hey if you grab this guy at his house with no warning while he has a pending TRO, that is going to piss off the judge, so let’s let him surrender instead,’” American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X.

The Trump administration is still working to detain Taal.

“I will not be intimidated,” Taal said in a statement Thursday. “Am I worried at times? Of course. Am I stressed beyond anything I’ve experienced before? Most definitely. But I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent.”

The Trump administration is so worried about judicial scrutiny over its deportation flights to El Salvador that officials are thinking about misusing the “state secrets privilege.”

Notus reports that Todd Blanche, the number two person at the Justice Department and Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, revealed as much in a court filing Friday. Specifically, he said that he had “direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.”

The fact that invoking the privilege is under consideration in the White House suggests that what actually happened is damning for the administration, and a negative ruling could seriously blunt Trump’s immigration powers. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is trying to find out exactly when the flights from the United States to the Central American country took off and whether officials were aware of a court order blocking the deportations at the time.

Since Boasberg’s court order on Saturday, he has been vilified by Trump, Elon Musk, and several other right-wing personalities, all of whom have made threats against him and called for his impeachment. New reports have also revealed that many of the immigrants rounded up and placed on the flight were not violent criminals or gang members, as administration officials claim. Many deportees simply had distinctive tattoos.

In addition to attacks on Boasberg’s credibility, the administration has also made the bizarre argument that the judge’s oral order carries less weight than a written one, and begun attempts to get the judge removed from the case by an appellate court. The threats to Boasberg even prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare statement of condemnation.

Trump has pulled out the rarely cited Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify the flights, which were only possible thanks to Secretary of State Marco Rubio cutting a deal with the country’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, to send them to facilities accused of engaging in torture. If the administration tries the state secrets privilege next, it will only deepen the ongoing constitutional crisis.